I lifted my weight forward onto the balls of my feet, ready to move either way. “Take it hard, then. I found your friend on the highway. I didn’t like it, either.”
“You found Tony after they killed him?”
“He wasn’t dead when I picked him up. He died at the hospital a few minutes later.”
“Did he say anything, tell you who drilled him?”
“Tony wasn’t talking. He was unconscious, in deep shock. My interest is finding the people that did it to him.”
“You a cop? State police?” His iron weapon was still, forgotten in his hand.
“I’ve worked for the state police. I’m a private detective.”
“Old man Meyer hire you?”
“Not yet.”
“You think he’s going to?”
“If he’s smart.”
“That’s what you think. Meyer still has his first nickel.” His rubbery mouth stretched in a broken-toothed grin. He laid the iron on the packing case behind him, ready to his hand.
I reached for my cigarettes, then thought better of it. “I’m out of smokes. Can I roll one?”
“Sure thing.”
He handed me his tobacco and papers and watched me critically while I rolled a cigarette. My fingers remembered the knack. He lit it for me.
“So you’re a detective, eh?”
“That’s right. My name is Archer.”
“Tarko.” He thumbed his chest. “They call me Hairless.”
“Glad to meet you, Tarko. What was Tony’s run?”
“It varied. Mostly he drove the San Francisco run. He was coming up from L. A. today, though. Special shipment.”
“What kind of a truck was he driving?”
“One of the new semis, GMC tractor, Fruehauf box. A twenty-tonner, same as that one there.”
He pointed across the yard with his cigarette, to one of the trucks that were standing inside the gate. It was a closed semitrailer the size of a small house. Its corrugated metal sides were bright with aluminum paint, except for the red and black sign: Meyer Line – Local and Long Distance – Las Cruces, Calif.
“And the payload?” I said.
“You’ll have to ask the old man. I’m not supposed to know. I’m just watchman here since I had my accident.”
“But you do know?”
He didn’t answer for a minute. He looked behind him, then up at the long lighted arc of the overpass where the big night trucks were rolling, southward to Los Angeles and the Imperial Valley, northward to Fresno, San Francisco, Portland. His eyes glazed with desire. He wished that he was rolling, headed north for Portland or south or east, anywhere so long as he was wheeling with horsepower under his toe.
“Can you keep: it under your hat?”
I told him I could.
He lowered his voice. “I heard the old man talking to the sheriff. He said it was bonded bourbon.”
“The whole truckload?”
“Must have been. The load alone was insured for sixty-five gees.”
“Was Tony bonded?”
“For a hundred, yep. He’s our bonded driver. I thought at first you was from the bonding company. The first idea they ever get in their little pointed heads is jumping on our necks.”
“Tony’s in the clear, anyway.”
“Yeah. But I can’t figure it. He had his orders not to stop for anybody or anything. The old man always says we shouldn’t stop for the governor himself if he wanted a lift. Anybody tries to cut over on us, we’re supposed to bull on through, smash them if we have to.” He brought his right fist up and smacked the inside of his other hand. “Only way I can see it, Tony forgot his orders and stopped on the highway for somebody. The poor little son of gun.” His left hand clenched his fist in a grip that left fingernail marks.
“You were fond of Tony.”
“Call it that. We live – we lived in the same boarding-house. I liked him better than most. I owed him something. The time my brakes went out on the Nojoqui grade, he was my helper. I was driving a tanker full of high-octane stuff. Took the ditch at a hundred. Tony jumped out at the top of the hill and ran the hell down and pulled me out of it. All I lost was my hair.”
“Who would he stop for?” I said. “I heard he liked women.”
“Who doesn’t?” He smiled ruefully. “The broads run like a deer when I take off my hat now.”
I brought him back to the subject: “What about Tony’s women? Drivers have been fingered by a woman before.”
“You’re telling me.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking hard. “There was a dame, yeah. I don’t hardly like to say it. I don’t know nothing against the dame for sure.”
“It wouldn’t be a woman called Anne Meyer?”
“Annie Meyer? Hell, no. She’s Meyer’s daughter. What would she be doing fingering one of her old man’s trucks?”
“I understood that she was Tony’s love interest.”
“She was in a way, I guess. He talked about her a lot. Sure, he was stuck on her. But she could never see him. Annie’s got other interests. That was the big sorrow in his life. But it didn’t amount to anything real. Know what I mean? This other dame was different. She made a big play for Tony the last week or so. He told me she was nuts about him. I dunno. It appeared to me he was stepping out of his class, same as he tried to do with Annie Meyer. The dame is a nightclub singer, a real doll. I never seen her, but he showed me her picture in the front of the club.”
“In town here?”
“Yeah. The Slipper, out at the end of Yanonali Street. He spent a lot of time there the last few days. And the way he talked, he’d stop a truck for her.” It was the highest compliment he could pay.
“What was her name?”
“I don’t remember her last name. Tony called her Jo.” He massaged his scalp. “The thing that makes me suspicious, she fell for Tony awful hard and fast, and she must of had a reason.”
“He was a good-looking boy, if she liked the Latin type.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll tell you, though, dames didn’t go for Tony usually. He frightened them off, kind of – got too intense about it, you might say. When he went overboard for some beast, he couldn’t leave her alone. Like with Annie Meyer now.” He paused and looked behind him. The lighted warehouse was empty, except for piles of cases along the walls.
“What about her?”
“Nothing much. He got in a little trouble over her. I guess I shouldn’t be flapping at the mouth. Only you brought her up.”
“Did he get too intense about her?”
“You can say that twice. But what do you say we skip it? The guy’s dead now. He won’t be bothering women any more. He never did mean them any harm. And most ways he was a decent guy for a Mex, as straight as any white man.” He searched his mind for an illustration, and added: “He had a damn good record on the road.”
“This trouble he got into over Annie Meyer,” I said. “What kind of trouble was it?”
Tarko looked uncomfortable. “Tony was a little bit of a nut, see. Just about dames, I mean. Especially Annie. She let him take her out a couple of times last year, and then he got in the habit of following her around at night, peeping in her apartment window, stuff like that. The poor guy didn’t mean any harm, but he got himself picked up for it.”
“Who picked him up?”
“The sheriff. He gave Tony a tongue-lashing, said he was nuts and he ought to go and see a head-doctor. Tony told me all about it at the time.”
My handmade cigarette was out. I dropped it and ground it under my heel. It had served its purpose.
“About this girl of his – Jo – did you give the sheriff the dope on her?”
“Not me. I wouldn’t give the chicken sheriff the time of day.”
“You don’t seem to like the sheriff much.”