I said, “Send it down with an itemized receipt,” and walked out of the cell with the two minions of the law staring razor blades at me. I caught up with Davis and Treadwell at the barred enclosure, and the deputy snickered at the doubled-over prisoner. Treadwell shot a blood cocktail onto his shirtfront, and when fat boy stood up, shot him a pointy-toe boot to the balls. Davis whooped, “You a mother dog!” and the deputy nosedived onto his well-thumbed issue of Batman.
Davis’s “way” consisted of our taking Harwell Treadwell to a jig joint on Ventura’s south side and plying him with fried chicken, gravy-drenched biscuits, and yams while I held my gun on him and my car-crazed partner fired questions about the ’36 Auburn speedster. Treadwell obliged between wolfish mouthfuls, and Davis expressed worry that the Auburn would get shot up when the remaining Treadwell brothers got taken down by the law. “You worry about that girl,” Harwell told us over and over. “Them partners of mine got hound blood.” Then I interjected, “You mean your brothers?” and Treadwell always countered with, “I ain’t no snitch, son.”
It was midaftemoon when we finally headed south on Pacific Coast Highway, me at the wheel, Davis and the extraditee in the backseat, Treadwell’s wrists cuffed behind his back, ankles manacled to the front-seat housing. The ragtop was down and sunlight and seabreeze had me thinking that this wasn’t such a bad assignment after all. Behind me, the two Okies jawed, sparred, rattled each other’s cages.
“Who’s got the pink slip on the speedster, boy?”
“Who’s your haberdasher? I never seen so many divergent angles on a set of threads in my life.”
“I got Hollywood in me, boy.”
“Nigger blood more like it. Where you from in Oklahoma?”
“Outside Norman. You from Gila Bend?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s to do there?”
“Set dog’s tails on fire and watch flies fuck, drink, fight, and chase your sister.”
“I heard your brothers go for anything white and on the hoof.”
“Plain anything, boss. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”
“You think they’ll hurt the Viertel girl?”
“That girl can take care of herself, and I ain’t sayin’ my brothers got her.”
“How’d you find out about her?”
“Miller read the society page and fell in love.”
“I thought you said your brothers weren’t in on this.”
“I ain’t sayin’ they are, I ain’t sayin’ they isn’t.”
“Kidnappin’s Oklahoma stuff from way back. The Barkers, Pretty Boy. How you account for that?”
“Well... I think maybe fellas comin’ from hunger are real curious about the ante on loved ones. How high can you go before they say, ‘No sir, you keep the son of a bitch’?”
“Let’s get back to the Auburn, boy.”
“Let’s not. I need somethin’ to keep you tantalized with.”
“Tantalize me now.”
“How’s this: tan leather upholstery that Miller spilled liquor on, radio that picks up the San Dago stations real good, a little grind on the gearbox when you go into third. Hey!”
I saw it then, too: an overturned motorcycle on fire smack in the middle of the highway. No cops were at the scene, but a sawhorse detour sign had been placed in the middle lane, directing southbound traffic to a road running inland. Reflexively, I hung a hard left turn onto it, the flames lapping at the car’s rear bumper.
Davis whooped, “Whooo! Mother dog.” Harwell Treadwell laughed like a white-trash hyena. The two-lane blacktop took us up and over a series of short slopes, then down into a box canyon closed in by scrub-covered hills that pressed right up against the roadside. I cursed the hour or so the detour was going to cost us, then a loud “Ka-raaack” sounded, and the windshield exploded in front of me.
Glass shrapnel filled the air; I shut my eyes and felt slashes on my cheeks and my hands gripping the steering wheel. Davis screeched “MOTHERFUCK!” and started firing at the hill to the left of us. Opening my eyes and looking over, I saw nothing but greenery, then three more shots hit the side of the car, richocheting ding-ding-ding.
I floored the gas; Davis fired at the muzzle bursts on the hillside; Harwell Treadwell made strange noises — like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or weep. Head on the wheel, I kept one eye on the rearview, and through it I saw Davis haul Treadwell off the seat to use as a bulletproof vest, his .38 in Treadwell’s mouth as added insurance.
Ka-raack! Ka-raack! Ka-raack!
The last shot hit the radiator; steam covered my entire field of vision. I drove blind, picking up speed on a downslope, then there was another shot; the left front tire buckled, and the car fishtailed. I decelerated and aimed at the roadside shoulder away from the gunfire, sightless, trying to bank us in just right. Scrub bushes, green and huge, jumped out of nowhere, and then everything went topsy-turvy — and I was eating blacktop and steam.
More “ka-raacks” pulsated through me — and I didn’t know if they were gunshots or parts of my brains going blooey. Enveloped by dust and vapor fumes, I heard, “Legs’ Legs, boy! Run!” I obeyed, stumble-running full-out.
The vapor dissipated, and I saw that I was sprinting toward a patch of furrowed farm dirt. Davis was running in front of me, half hauling, half shoving Harwell Treadwell, gun at his head. I caught up with them, realizing the shots had ended — and at the far side of the dirt patch I saw trees and buildings — maybe a sharecropper shantytown.
We ran toward it — two cops and the kidnapper in handcuffs who was our bulletproof vest, life insurance and hole card, kicking dried-up cabbages and carrots and bean stalks out of the ground as we speedballed for sanctuary. Nearing the town, I saw that it was composed of one street with ramshackle wood structures on either side, a packed dirt road the only throughway. Slowing to a trot, I grabbed Davis’s arm and gasped, “We can’t risk taking a car out. We’ve gotta call the Ventura bulls.”
Davis jerked Treadwell’s bracelet chain, sending him face first to the ground. Catching his breath, he kicked him hard in the ass. “That’s for my car and in case I die.” Wiping dusty sweat off his brow, he pointed his .38 at the hick-town main street like he was imploring me to feast my eyes. I did, and a second later I saw what he was getting at: the phone lines were crumpled in a heap beside the base of the terminal pole that stood just inside the edge of the town proper.
I looked back at hardscrabble land and the roadway that held the remains of my partner’s car; I looked ahead at Tobacco Road, California style. “Let’s go.”
We entered the town, and I gave it a long eyeballing while Davis walked in a side-by-side drape with Harwell Treadwell, 38 snub dangling by a thumb and forefinger, business end aimed at his cojones. The left-hand side of the street featured a grain store, a market, the front window filled with stacks of Tokay and muscatel short dogs, and a clapboard farm-machinery repair shop with rusted parts strewn in front of it. On the right, the facades were all boarded up, with a string of prewar jalopies parked up against them, including a strange looking Model T hybrid that seemed made out of mismatched parts. The only strollers about were a couple of grizzled men dressed in sun-faded War Relocation Authority khakis — and they shot us a cursory fish-eye and kept on walking.
When we reached the end of the street, Davis spotted a flimsy-looking unboarded door, kicked it in, and shoved Treadwell inside. Turning to face me, he said, “We got what them boys want. You run into them you tell them Harwell is chewing on the end of my .38, and the first shot I hear he gets a hot lead cocktail. And you get us a car, boy.”
I nodded, then backtracked to the stand of heaps, looking for a likely one to commandeer. All six of them had at least one dead tire, and I started wondering about the lack of people, and why the two I’d seen so far didn’t seem alarmed at raggedy-assed armed strangers in their midst. Noticing a bolted-on fire ladder attached to the grain building across the street, I made for it, hoisting myself up the rungs.