Not a peep, just the staring.
I continued to stand with my back stiff, rooted in the center of the room. My eyes tracked the vacant, lifeless forms. These people were frightened. But frightened of what? That old fat guy, Ben Moran?
After long seconds of dead silence, the food slot pleaded in a hushed tone, “Come on, Mack, leave us alone. Get going.”
“Why don’t you come out from behind that wall and make me leave?”
The food slot was beginning to grate my nerves. In fact, the whole joint was making my skin itch.
“Grapes of Wrath. Do you hear me, damn it? It’s The Grapes of Wrath!” I stomped out of the cafe.
In the parking lot around the corner of the building, I noticed a payphone. Stepping in and closing the door, I dropped a coin in the shot, dialed O, and when the operator came on, I asked to make a collect call to Sol Silverman at Silverman Investigations, Inc. in Downey.
Joyce came on the line. She accepted the call and said, “Oh, Jimmy, I’m glad you called. Sol has been pacing the floor. Hang on a minute, please.”
The line clicked and there was a moment of static.
It was stifling hot in the booth. I turned to open the door a crack and that’s when I saw her. The teenage girl from the cafe stood just outside the booth staring at me with the same blank expression as the people inside had. I swung the door open all the way. “Can I help you miss?”
She stood there motionless and silent.
“Miss?” I said.
“You want to know about the center?”
My heart thumped. “Yes.”
She took a couple of quick glances in both directions. “Meet me behind the old Harvey House in five minutes. But I can’t wait. I’ll leave if you’re not there.” She started to back away.
“The what? What house? Where?”
“You’ll find it,” she whispered over her shoulder as she turned. She moved like a shadow, slipped around the corner of the building and disappeared.
“Jimmy,” Sol said on the phone. “I’m glad you called. I have news-”
I hung up the phone and ran for my car.
CHAPTER 14
I jumped in the Vette, raced out of the parking lot, and shot into the first gas station I saw, a Standard Oil just off First Street by Riverside Drive.
A craggy-faced, weathered guy hobbled out of the office. He had on the Standard Oil uniform, white pants and shirt, black bowtie, and a garrison cap like those worn by soldiers in World War II. The old guy looked like he had fought one too many battles. The Battle of Gas Pump Island popped into my head.
I asked directions to the Harvey House. He didn’t say anything, just kept moving toward me with a lumbering gait. Jumping out of the car, I rushed to him and asked again about the old house.
He stood there deep in thought. Finally, he drew an oil-stained orange rag from his hip pocket and slowly wiped his brow with it. He looked off into the distance, started to point, and then said, “Nah.” He stared at the rag in his hand. Forever, it seemed.
I mentioned that I was in a hurry and glanced at my Timex: two minutes had passed since my encounter with the girl.
Suddenly, like in a cartoon, the light bulb lit up. Not only did he know what and where the Harvey House was, but he was bent on giving me the entire history of the place. I tried to interrupt, but the guy wouldn’t shut up about the old house. He kept rambling on, said the house was once used as a location for a 1940s movie, The Harvey Girls, but now it was in terrible shape.
He kept on talking, grousing that someone should turn the place into a museum. “Maybe they will someday. You know, it reminds me of a story…”
I was getting frantic. If the girl took off, I’d never find the teen drug center. It could be anywhere in the billion square miles of desert out here. How foolish to think I could drive to Barstow, cruise around, and find it.
What did I expect? Did I think there would be signs pointing the way? Signs like the Burma Shave ads posted every mile or so I saw driving up here: “The monkey took…One look at Jim… And threw the peanuts… Back at him… Burma Shave.” Even the Burma Shave pundits didn’t think I had a chance.
This was hopeless. I’d better forget about the center and head back to Downey. But before I left Barstow, I’d call Sol and see if he had any news. Maybe he could find out, through the authorities, something about the center. It had to be licensed, I was sure. But where would he begin? I didn’t even have the name of the place. Oh my God, it suddenly dawned on me that I had hung up on him.
I cast a quick glance in all directions and spotted a phone booth. I was about to make a dash to it when I saw the gas station guy pointing to the west at what appeared to be an abandoned train station just down the road about a hundred yards.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The Harvey House.”
“Where? I don’t see any house.”
“The Harvey House is the old railroad depot and hotel right next door,” he said. “Ain’t that what you were asking me about?”
I had only thirty seconds before the teenage girl would leave. Jumping in my car, I cranked the engine and stomped on the gas. I swerved to miss the fence separating the gas station lot from the dilapidated hotel, then stood on the brake. In a cloud of dust, I skidded to stop in front of the antiquated hotel-depot. Ten seconds to spare.
The sun was low in the western sky when I darted around the corner of the building and ventured into the dirt yard behind the derelict building. I stopped and glanced around. The girl wasn’t there.
The atmosphere was eerie, unnaturally quiet. The trash-laden yard was blanketed with long murky shadows. I watched carefully as I walked to the other end of the building amid a minefield of debris. Rusted oil drums, a banged-up refrigerator, a jumbled nest of broken pipes sitting next to a worn-out sofa with its fibrous stuffing pulled out in spots like the straw from a long-standing scarecrow littered what was once, I imagined, the manicured grounds of the old mission-style building behind me.
A spotted lizard, no bigger than a Tiparillo cigar, scurried from its position under a rock, stopped once with its head raised as if listening for a distant train that would never pass this way again, then quickly vanished behind a rusty hubcap.
Still no sign of the girl. I stopped again and glanced up at the building’s facade. Six large Spanish arches ran the width of the outer wall. The portals gave access to a ghostly promenade. Halfway down the building, opening into a dark, foreboding interior was the main entrance, a black gaping maw situated behind a row of fluted Roman columns.
I took a few more steps and heard soft clicks. Light footsteps repeated behind me. I spun around and listened: nothing. Starting back to the corner where I’d come from, I heard the footsteps again. But when I stopped, they stopped.
A slight breeze kicked up. A scrap of yellowing paper fluttered at my feet like a butterfly before settling down again. I felt a chill in the shadows behind the building and shivered a little. But, it wasn’t the breeze that caused me to shudder. It was the ghostly, decaying place itself.
What the hell was I doing out here in a town in the middle of the Mojave Desert anyway? Looking for a drug center that probably had nothing to do with Robbie’s escape. Standing behind an old dead hotel waiting for a teenage girl who was obviously pulling a prank. She was probably laughing it up right now back at the Bright Spot with her buddies, the Barstow Steinbeck Society.
I had to get back to Downey, find Sol, and apologize. Sol lived like a potentate, only more so, and he always bragged, “No one hangs up on Sol Silverman.” Well, he won’t be able to say that anymore, and he’ll be pissed, that’s for sure.
I took one last glance at the old derelict behind me. “Bye, Harvey,” I said and started to walk back to the car. But just then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a slight movement; a figure stood in the gloom behind one of the arches inside the building. It was her, the teenage girl. She slipped out to where I could see her and stood silently, staring at me in the dim light just in front of the last arch.