“Listen, Marlowe,” she said with sudden urgency. “I didn’t mean to be rough with you. This is very important to Clyde Umney. If he doesn’t come through, he might lose a very valuable connection. I was just sounding off.”
“I liked it, Vermilyea. It did things to my subconscious. I’ll call in when I can.”
I hung up, went through the gate, down the ramp, walked about from here to Ventura to get to Track Eleven and climbed aboard a coach that was already full of the drifting cigarette smoke that is so kind to your throat and nearly always leaves you with one good lung. I filled and lit a pipe and added to the general frowst.
The train pulled out, dawdled interminably through the yards and the back stretches of East L.A., picked up a little speed and made its first stop at Santa Ana. Subject did not get off. At Oceanside and Del Mar the same. At San Diego I hopped off quickly, chartered a cab, and then waited eight minutes outside the old Spanish station for the redcaps to come out with the baggage. Then the girl came out too.
She didn’t take a cab. She crossed the street and rounded the corner to a U-Drive outfit and after a longish interval came out again looking disappointed. No driver’s license, no U-Drive. You’d think she would have known that.
She took a cab this time and it did a U turn and started north. Mine did the same. I had a little difficulty with my driver about the tail job.
“That’s something you read about in books, mister. We don’t do it in Dago.”
I passed him a fin and the 4 x 2? photostat of my license. He looked them over, both of them. He looked off up the block.
“Okay, but I report it,” he said. “The dispatcher may report it to the Police Business Office. That’s the way it is here, chum.”
“Sounds like the kind of city I ought to live in,” I said.
“And you’ve lost the tail. He turned left two blocks ahead.”
The driver handed me back my wallet. “Lost my left eye,” he said tersely. “What you think a two-way radiophone is for?” He picked it up and talked into it.
He turned left at Ash Street to Highway 101 and we merged with the traffic and kept going at a peaceable forty. I stared at the back of his head.
“You don’t have a worry in the world,” the driver told me over his shoulder. “This five is on top of the fare, huh?”
“Right. And why don’t I have a worry in the world?”
“The passenger’s going to Esmeralda. That’s twelve miles north of here on the oceanfront. Destination, unless changed en route—and if it is I’ll get told—a hotel joint called the Rancho Descansado. That’s Spanish for relax, take it easy.”
“Hell, I didn’t need a cab at all,” I said.
“You got to pay for the service, mister. We ain’t buying groceries giving it away.”
“You Mexican?”
“We don’t call ourselves that, mister. We call ourselves Spanish-Americans. Born and raised in the USA. Some of us don’t hardly speak Spanish any more.”
“Es gran lastima,” I said. “Una lengua muchisima hermosa.”
He turned his head and grinned. “Tiene Vd. razon, amigo. Estoy muy bien de acuerdo.”
We went on to Torrance Beach, through there and swung out towards the point. From time to time the hackle talked into his radiophone. He turned his head enough to speak to me again.
“You want to keep out of sight?”
“What about the other driver? Will he tell his passenger she’s being tailed?”
“He ain’t been told hisself. That’s why I asked you.”
“Pass him and get there ahead, if you can. That’s five more on the top.”
“A cinch. He won’t even see me. I can rib him later on over a bottle of Tecate.”
We went through a small shopping center, then the road widened and the houses on one side looked expensive and not new, while the houses on the other side looked very new and still not cheap. The road narrowed again and we were in a 25-mile zone. My driver cut to the right, wound through some narrow streets, jumped a stop sign, and before I had had time to size up where we were going, we were sliding down into a canyon with the Pacific glinting off to the left beyond a wide shallow beach with two lifeguard stations on open metal towers. At the bottom of the canyon the driver started to turn in through the gates, but I stopped him. A large sign, gold script on a green background, said: El Rancho Descansado.
“Get out of sight,” I said. “I want to make sure.”
He swung back on the highway, drove fast down beyond the end of the stucco wall, then cut into a narrow winding road on the far side and stopped. A gnarled eucalyptus with a divided trunk hung over us. I got out of the cab, put dark glasses on, strolled down to the highway and leaned against a bright red jeep with the name of a service station painted on it. A cab came down the hill and turned into the Rancho Descansado. Three minutes passed. The cab came out empty and turned back up the hill. I went back to my driver.
“Cab No. 423,” I said. “That check?”
“That’s your pigeon. What now?”
“We wait. What’s the layout over there?”
“Bungalows with car ports. Some single, some double. Office in a small one down front. Rates pretty steep in season. This is slack time around here. Half price probably and plenty of room.”
