And suddenly there was a great tongue of fire and a terrible iron crash as if a battleship had run on a reef. And then a muffled clanging that seemed to come from under their feet. And, finally, a deep distant boom from the bowels of the earth and a barrage of miscellaneous echoes.
And then, with the noise gone, a steady, singing silence.
Bond heaved a deep sigh as if he was just waking up. So that was the end of one of the Spangs, of one of the brutal, theatrical, overblown dead-end adults who made up the Spangled Mob. He had been a stage-gangster, surrounded with stage properties, but that didn’t alter the fact that he had intended to kill Bond.
«Let’s get away from here,» Tiffany Case said urgently. «I’ve had enough of this.»
Bond felt the pain creeping back into his body as his tension relaxed. «Yes,» he said shortly. He was glad to turn his back on the memory of the up-turned white face in the beautiful black, charging engine. He felt light-headed. He wondered if he would make it, «We’ll have to get to the road. It’ll be hard going. Come on.»
It took them an hour and a half to cover the two miles and, by the time he collapsed in the dirt beside the cement highway, Bond was delirious. It was the girl who had got him there. But for her he would never have kept a straight course. He would have stumbled about amongst the cactus and rock and mica until his strength was exhausted and the broiling sun came to finish the job.
And now she was cradling his head against her and talking softly to him and wiping the sweat off his face with the corner of her shirt.
And every now and then she paused to look up and down the dead-straight concrete road whose horizons were already shimmering in the heat waves of early morning.
An hour later she jumped to her feet and tucked in her shirt and went and stood in the middle of the road. A low black car was coming out of the dancing haze which hid the distant valley of Las Vegas.
It rolled to a stop just in front of her and a hawk-like face under an untidy mop of straw-coloured hair stuck itself out of the window. Keen grey eyes briefly looked her over. They glanced at the prostrate figure of the man in the dust beside the road and came back to her.
Then, in a friendly Texan drawl, the driver said, «Felix Leiter, Mam. At your service. And what may I do for you on this beautiful morning?»
21. «NOTHING PROPINKS LIKE PROPINQUITY»
«… and when I get into town I call my friend Ernie Cureo. James knows him. And his wife is having hysterics and Ernie’s in the hospital. So I go right along and he tells me the score and I figure that James may need some reinforcements. So I jump on my coal-black mare and gallop through the night and when I get near to Spectreville I see the light in the sky. Mr Spang’s having himself a barbecue, I figure. And the gate in the fence is open so I decide to join the feast. Well, believe me or believe me not, there’s not a soul in the place except a guy with a busted leg and multiple contusions, who’s crawling down the road trying to get away. And he looks to me mighty like a young hood called Frasso from Detroit Ernie Cureo tells me was one of the guys that took James. The fellow’s in no state to deny this and I more or less get the picture and I figure that Rhyolite’s my next stop. So I tell the kid he’ll soon be having plenty of company from the Fire Department and I take him to the gate and leave him there and then after a while there’s a girl standing in the middle of the desert looking as if she’s been fired out of a cannon and here we all are. And now you tell.»
So it’s not all part of a dream and I am lying in the back of the Studillac and this is Tiffany’s lap under my head and that is Felix and we are going hell for leather down the road to safety, a doctor, a bath, some food and drink and an endless amount of sleep. Bond moved and he felt Tiffany’s hand in his hair to tell it was all real and just like he hoped, and he lay still again and said nothing and held each moment to him and listened to their voices and the zip of the tyres on the road.
At the end of Tiffany’s story, Felix Leiter gave a reverent whistle. «Jeese, Mam,» he said. «The two of you sure seem to have busted a hole in the Spangled Mob. What in hell’s going to happen now? There are plenty of other hornets in the nest and just sittin’ around buzzin’ isn’t goin’ to be their way. They’ll want some action.»
«Check,» said Tiffany. «Spang was a member of the Syndicate at Vegas and these guys stick pretty much together. Then there’s Shady Tree and those two torpedoes, Wint and Kidd, whoever they may be. The sooner we cross the State-line the better. Then what?»
«We’re doin’ all right so far,» said Felix Leiter. «Be at Beatty in ten minutes, then we’ll get on to 58 and be over the line in half an hour. Then there’s a long ride through Death Valley and over the mountains down to Olancha where we hit No6. We could stop there and get James to a doc and do some eating and cleaning up. Then just stay on 6 until we get to LA. It’ll be a hell of a drive, but we should make LA by lunchtime. Then we can relax a bit and think again. My guess is that we oughta get you and James out of the country pretty quick. The boys’ll try and fix all kinds of phoney raps on you both, and once you’re located I wouldn’t give a nickel for either of you. Best chance would be to get you both on a plane to New York tonight and off to England tomorrow. James can take it from there.»
«I guess that makes sense,» said the girl. «But who is this Bond guy, anyway? What’s his racket? Is he an eye?»
«You better ask him yourself, Mam,» Bond heard Leiter say carefully. «But I wouldn’t let that worry you over much. He’ll take care of you.»
Bond smiled to himself and in the long silence that followed he dropped off into an uneasy sleep which lasted until they were half way across California and had pulled up outside a white wicket gate that said ‘Otis Fairplay, MD’.
And then, a mass of surgical tape and streaked with mercuro-chrome, washed and shaved and with a huge breakfast inside him, he was back in the car and back in the world and Tiffany Case had withdrawn into her old ironical and uncompromising manner and Bond was making himself useful by watching for speed cops as Leiter kept the car in the eighties down the endless dazzling road towards the distant cloudline that hid the High Sierras.
Then they were rolling easily along Sunset Boulevard between the palm trees and the emerald lawns, the dust-streaked Studillac looking incongruous among the glistening Corvettes and Jaguars, and finally, towards evening, they were sitting in the dark, cool bar of the Beverley Hills Hotel, and there were new suitcases in the lobby and brand new Hollywood clothes and even Bond’s battle-scarred face didn’t mean they hadn’t all just finished work at the studios.
There was a telephone on the table beside their Martinis. Felix Leiter finished talking to New York for the fourth time since their arrival.
«Well that’s fixed,» he said, putting back the receiver. «My pals at the office have got you on the Elizabeth. Been delayed by a strike at the docks. Sails tomorrow night at eight. They’ll meet you in the morning at La Guardia with the tickets and you’ll go on board any time in the afternoon. They picked up the rest of your things at the Astor, James. One small case and your famous golf clubs. And Washington’s obliged with a passport for Tiffany. There’ll be a man from the State Department at the airport. You’ll both have some forms to sign. Got one of my old pals at the CIA to work it. The middays have made a big splash with the story — ‘Ghost Town goes West’ and so on — but they don’t seem to have found our friend Spang yet and your names don’t figure. My boys say there’s no call out for you with the cops, but one of our undercover men says the gangs are looking for you and your description’s been circulated. Ten Grand attached. So it’s as well you’re skipping quick. Better go aboard separately. Cover up as much as you can and go down to your cabins and stay there. All hell’s going to bust loose when they get to the bottom of that old mine. That’ll make leastwise three corpses to nothing and they don’t like that kind of score.»