“The man who lives there is my friend,” she said tartly.
He shone the flash in her face for a moment. “You look swell,” he said. “But we don’t like your friend. We don’t like characters that try to run gambling joints in this kind of neighborhood.”
“I know nothing about a gambling joint,” Dolores told him sharply.
“Neither do the cops,” the tall man said. “They don’t even want to find out. What’s your friend’s name, darling?”
“That is not of your business,” Dolores spit at him.
“Go on home and knit socks, darling,” the tall man said. He turned to me.
“The road’s not in use tonight,” he said. “Now you know why.”
“Think you can make it stick?” I asked him.
“It will take more than you to change our plans. You ought to see our tax assessments. And those monkeys in the prowl car—and a lot more like them down at the City Hall—just sit on their hands when we ask for the law to be enforced.”
I unlatched the car door and swung it open. He stepped back and let me get out. I walked over to the prowl car. The two cops in it were leaning back lazily. Their loudspeaker was turned low, just audibly muttering. One of them was chewing gum rhythmically.
“How’s to break up this road block and let the citizens through?” I asked him.
“No orders, buddy. We’re just here to keep the peace. Anybody starts anything, we finish it.”
“They say there’s a gambling house up the line.”
“They say,” the cop said.
“You don’t believe them?”
“I don’t even try, buddy,” he said, and spat past my shoulder.
“Suppose I have urgent business up there.”
He looked at me without expression and yawned.
“Thanks a lot, buddy,” I said.
I went back to the Mercury, got my wallet out and handed the tall man a card. He put his flash on it, and said: “Well?”
He snapped the flash off and stood silent. His face began to take form palely in the darkness.
“I’m on business. To me it’s important business. Let me through and perhaps you won’t need this block tomorrow.”
“You talk large, friend.”
“Would I have the kind of money it takes to patronize a private gambling club?”
“
He turned to the shotgun man. “What do you think?”
“Chance it. Just two of them and both sober.”
The tall one snapped his flash on again and made a side sweep with it back and forth. A car motor started. One of the block cars backed around on to the shoulder. I got in and started the Mercury, went on through the gap and watched the block car in the mirror as it took up position again, then cut its high beam lights.
“Is this the only way in and out of here?”
“They think it is, amigo. There is another way, but it is private road through an estate. We would have had to go around by the valley side.”
“We nearly didn’t get through,” I told her. “This can’t be very bad trouble anybody is in.”
“I knew you would find a way, amigo.”
“Something stinks,” I said nastily. “And it isn’t wild lilac.”
“Such a suspicious man. Do you not even want to kiss me?”
“You ought to have used a little of that back at the road block. That tall guy looked lonely. You could have taken him off in the bushes.”
She hit me across the mouth with the back of her hand. “You son of a bitch,” she said casually. “The next driveway on the left, if you please.”
We topped a rise and the road ended suddenly in a wide black circle edged with whitewashed stones. Directly ahead was a wire fence with a wide gate in it, and a sign on-the gate: Private Road. No Trespassing. The gate was open and a padlock hung from one end of a loose chain on the posts. I turned the car around a white oleander bush: and was in the motor yard of a long low white house with a tile roof and a four-car garage in the corner, under a walled balcony. Both the wide garage doors were closed. There was no light in the house. A high moon made a bluish radiance on the white stucco walls. Some of the lower windows were shuttered. Four packing cases full of trash stood in a row at the foot of the steps. There was a big garbage can upended and empty. There were two steel drums with papers in them.
There was no sound from the house, no sign of life. I stopped the Mercury, cut the lights and the motor, and just sat. Dolores moved in the corner. The seat seemed to be shaking. I reached across and touched her. She was shivering.
