“Where?” I asked. It wasn’t really a question, just a sound I made. I sucked on a cold pipe and leaned my head on my hand, brooding at the telephone. It was a voice to talk to anyway.
“You will come?”
“I’d sit up with a sick parrot tonight. Where do I go?”
“I will come for you. I will be before your building in fifteen minutes. It is not easy to get where we go.”
“How is it coming back,” I asked, “or don’t we care?”
But she had already hung up.
Down at the drugstore lunch counter I had time to inhale two cups of coffee and a melted-cheese sandwich with two slivers of ersatz bacon imbedded in it, like dead fish in the silt at the bottom of a drained pool.
I was crazy. I liked it.
26
It was a black Mercury convertible with a light top. The top was up. When I leaned in at the door Dolores Gonzales slid over towards me along the leather seat.
“You drive please, amigo. I do not really ever like to drive.”
The light from the drugstore caught her face. She had changed her clothes again, but it was still all black, save for a flame-colored shirt. Slacks and a kind of loose coat like a man’s leisure jacket.
I leaned on the door of the car. “Why didn’t she call me?”
“She couldn’t. She did not have the number and she had very little time.”
“Why?”
“It seemed to be while someone was out of the room for just a moment.”
“And where is this place she called from?”
“I do not know the name of the street. But I can find the house. That is why I come. Please get into the car and let us hurry.”
“Maybe,” I said. “And again maybe I am not getting into the car. Old age and arthritis have made me cautious.”
“Always the wisecrack,” she said. “It is a very strange man.”
“Always the wisecrack where possible,” I said, “and it is a very ordinary guy with only one head—which has been rather harshly used at times. The times usually started out like this.”
“Will you make love to me tonight?” she asked softly.
“That again is an open question. Probably not.”
“You would not waste your time. I am not one of these synthetic blondes with a skin you could strike matches on. These ex-laundresses with large bony hands and sharp knees and unsuccessful breasts.”
“Just for half an hour,” I said, “let’s leave the sex to the side. It’s great stuff, like chocolate sundaes. But there comes a time you would rather cut your throat. I guess maybe I’d better cut mine.”
I went around the car and slid under the wheel and started the motor.
“We go west,” she said, “through the Beverly Hills and then farther on.”
I let the clutch in and drifted around the corner to go south to Sunset. Dolores got one of her long brown cigarettes out.
“Did you bring a gun?” she asked.
“No. What would I want a gun for?” The inside of my left arm pressed against the Luger in the shoulder harness.
“It is better not perhaps.” She fitted the cigarette into the little golden tweezer thing and lit it with the golden lighter. The light flaring in her face seemed to be swallowed up by her depthless black eyes.
I turned west on Sunset and swallowed myself up in three lanes of racetrack drivers who were pushing their mounts hard to get nowhere and do nothing.
“What kind of trouble is Miss Weld in?”
“I do not know. She just said that it was trouble and she was much afraid and she needed you.”
“You ought to be able to think up a better story than that.”
She didn’t answer. I stopped for a traffic signal and turned to look at her. She was crying softly in the dark.
“I would not hurt a hair of Mavis Weld’s head,” she said. “I do not quite expect that you would believe me.”
“On the other hand,” I said, “maybe the fact that you don’t have a story helps.”
She started to slide along the seat towards me.
“Keep to your own side of the car,” I said. “I’ve got to drive this heap.”
“You do not want my head on your shoulder?”
“Not in this traffic.”
