Chapter One

Except for layers of dust, piled on across nine states, the Porsche was as new as it looked. Through his hands he could feel its headlong strength and untouched power reserve. It darted, low-slung, on the narrow roadway like a frightened beetle. The hum of power and smell of expensive newness gave him a sensual kind of pleasure. He let the sense of pleasure flood through him and drove without thinking of any of the rest of it.

On both sides of the highway the forlorn wasteland stretched as far as he could see, under the white, metallic glare of desert sun, to distant ash-blue hills.

The kid beside him had been mumbling steadily but Ric had stopped listening within five minutes after he’d picked him up at the LAST CHANCE FOR GAS signboard. There had been something faintly amusing about the skinny kid standing with his suitcase beside this sign when there was nothing else alive in that whole countryside.

He wished now he’d left the kid where he saw him back there. The monotone muttering was bad enough; it was meaningless, covering the jazzing that was rattling around in the kid’s head. Ric was even less interested in the hitchhiker’s inner tensions than in his diarrhea of the tonsils.

He kept his gaze straight ahead. There was no sense in letting the kid read in his eyes that he dug him loud and clear. Nothing moved in that desolation out there except the heat waves on the black road top.

The kid said it again. “I asked you, how far you going, mister?”

Ric shrugged. “What difference does it make? Anywhere ought to be better than that signboard back there.”

“Yeah. That was a jazzing all right. I didn’t even see the road there until the guy stopped and said he was turning off.”

“Stow it, kid.”

“Say. What do you mean? What kind of talk is that?”

“Son, I miss nothing. Don’t you forget it. There wasn’t any turn-off road back there.”

The kid laughed. His hands were trembling. “Man. That’s pretty good, man. I just flew there, out in the middle of that highway, huh? Like a man from Mars, huh?”

“If you say so.”

Ric sensed the kid squirming in the bucket seat. He stepped harder on the gas, feeling the hot wind lick at his face.

Finally the kid made a slight sobbing sound in his throat, slumped deeper, looked at the dashboard.

“Yeah, yeah. Nice car. Let’s see you touch a hundred and twenty.”

Ric didn’t answer. The speedometer needle didn’t even tremble at eighty-five.

“Oh, man. You’re tough, guy. You don’t say nothing. You do like you want. Man. Funny, you don’t look that tough.”

A smile pulled at Ric’s mouth. He heard the kid catch his breath. After a moment the kid said, “Mind if I look at that newspaper back there?”

“No. Help yourself.”

The hitchhiker twisted in the seat. He was sweated and dusty with road-grime, and there was a smell about him, an odor of fear. He pulled the newspaper off the luxurious leather suitcase.

“Man. You buy real leather, man. Man, you live like you got it all.”

“Shut up and read the paper.”

The kid tensed, straightening slightly, then shook it off. He shook out the paper, stared at the headlines.

Ric pulled his gaze from the road long enough to glance at the black band of type: DEMAND QUARTER MILLION IN IRON-FIELD CHILD SNATCH.

“Say, man, you kidding me? This paper’s too old for wrapping fish. Man, this here paper’s five days old.”

“You didn’t ask me how old it was. You asked me if you could read it.”

“Man, you ever bite yourself in the morning when you’re shaving?”

“I’ll tell you this, kid. Don’t hold that paper while you try to get your gun out of your belt. I saw that gun when you got in the car.”

“That ought to make it easy. I don’t have to tell you what I want.”

“You still going to make a play?”

“You saw the gun when I got in. Why didn’t you leave me there?”

Ric smiled again, and the smile gave his lean face a somber sad expression. “Well, kid, I’ll tell you. There was no side road, nobody in sight. That could have meant you’d pulled off a job on some sucker headed east. In that case, you just wanted a ride to a town.”

“Man, you lay on it chilled, don’t you? You knew I might of held up somebody—and you didn’t cut out?”

“That was between you and your parole board, sonny. You fold up that paper, put it in the back, behave yourself, and it’ll lie that way.”

“Sonny, man. You lecture like a right joe, but you could be readin’ the slides. Them shoes you’re wearing cost sixty bucks anyhow. I’ve owned six suits in my life and combined they didn’t cost what that jacket set you back. Man, they stitched that shirt to size. Me, I ain’t asking much. Seems to me you got a load, I ain’t got nothing—and that ain’t the way I like it.”

“Sonny, that sad story won’t buy you nothing but six feet of dirt with a hole in it.”

The boy screamed suddenly. “Stop ridin’ me. Damn it, stop ridin’ me. You know what I want, man. You know I got my hand on my gun right now. You know you can make me real mad.”

The car did not slow. Ric’s voice had tightened; this was the only apparent change. “You want to get out here, kid? I mean all in one piece?”

“You talk big. You think I won’t put a bullet in you.”

“At eighty-five a bullet in me won’t buy either one of us anything.” Ric sighed. “Son, I’m going to slow down to thirty-five. When I do, I’m going to throw you out of here.”

The hitchhiker jerked the gun free from his belt. His hand trembled. “Man, you talk. You gonna talk yourself to death.”

“I told you not to pull that gun. Now, kid, by the time you pick yourself up off this highway, you’re going to be one hell of a lot wiser. But it might be some time before it’ll do you any good.”

“Stop this car.” The boy’s eyes were distended. He sat forward in the seat, twisting toward Ric, jabbing the gun into his side.

Without seeming to move, Ric stepped hard on the brake. The car seemed to jackknife. Brakes screeched and the smell of rubber was acrid in the car.

Thrown forward, the boy struck his head against the front windshield. He made a gasping sound and tried to brace himself. In one movement, Ric lifted his foot from the brake, touched the accelerator, and caught the boy’s wrist in his hand. He twisted, the sound of torn tendons sharp against the boy’s scream.

Ric tossed the gun out his window. It smashed on the highway, bits and parts dancing and scattering in all directions.

Ric reached beyond the boy, slapped the door handle. The door opened just slightly against the wind pressure. As the car slowed to an exact thirty-five, the door swung out more. The kid glanced at the speedometer, screamed again and clawed at the car seat.

Ric put his hand against the boy’s chest and shoved, half-lifting him across the door facing. The screaming boy grasped at the door and it swung wide under his weight, carrying him with it. For a moment he hung on to it until his feet touched the road. Then he was jerked free, rolling and bouncing along the pavement.

Ric hefted the cheap suitcase, pushed it out the door. It struck on its end and leaped straight up, snapping open and spilling its contents as it rolled slower and slower after the Porsche.

Ric reached over then, caught the door, slammed it. He did not look in the rearview mirror. Lines were pulled around his nostrils and down the sides of his mouth. There were a hundred old agonies roiling in his eyes. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “Damn it,” Ric said. “Oh, God damn it.”

Chapter Two

He lifted his foot from the accelerator, glancing at the two oblong signs stabbed in the highway shoulder. The first read, LOS SOLANOS, NEW MEXICO’S FRIENDLIEST CITY, 8 MILES. He felt a faint sinking in his solar plexus. This was the town. This was what it all had led to. The other sign read, speed limit, 45 mph. He slowed, observing the speed regulation exactly.

He closed his eyes tightly for an instant against the glare and dryness of the sun. The air seemed to poke in the car window like hot lances through his eyeballs. The land was flat and empty and even patches of shadow were a bilious green. Cactus twisted as if withdrawing from the sun; the boulders reflected it; it glittered on the bald ranges.

He felt a sense of loneliness for a moment, an empty need for something he’d never put into words, and never would. The desolation of the vast country was like a symbolic painting of his own life—the boulders, the dry heat—without another soul as far as he could see. His mouth twisted. When he tried to be kindly, give a kid a lift out of the sun, he ended up with a gun poked in his ribs and another memory of violence that would grab at him in the night.

He shook his head. He did not allow himself to think about the violence or the few moments of pleasure.

He stared at the country, memorizing it, because all of it, its very deceiving sense of being changeless and unchanging, was important to him now. What had happened to him in the past, what was ahead—if anything—had no meaning. There was only one meaning to anything—Los Solanos was before him on Highway 58.

He glanced in the rear-view mirror. There was nothing back there, only the vanishing point of the road in surrealistic nothingness. He tried to tell himself that there was nothing behind him—no ships he’d longed to sail, no women he could have had, not even the woman who was always just ahead in the crowd. But she wasn’t really there when he tried to catch her. And the funny part of it was, the woman hadn’t really looked like Anne at all. One nice thing about being out here—he wouldn’t forever be mistaking the way Anne walked in a crowd.

The town lunged into view suddenly. Los Solanos had less than a thousand citizens and almost none were out in the noon heat. The town wasn’t much. It really looked as though whoever laid out towns had spilled this one into a crater between desert and mountain by mistake. He did not see why people would live here by choice, unless it was just too hot to move.

He stopped for the only traffic signal, a faded red in the sun’s glare. Heat flared into the car, almost stifling him. On his left was a Texaco station with a pick-up truck baking on an untended oil-lift. Through a window on his right he saw a few people sitting in a café. It looked small and cool, and looking at it made him thirsty.

When the traffic signal changed, he moved forward slowly, looking the town over. Thirty or forty cars were parked the entire length of the wide street. A drug store, bank, Indian curio shop, a white two-storied hotel and other assorted shops lined the street. Nothing was happening in any of them. Then suddenly he found himself in a residential section dotted with cottonwood trees.

Ahead of him he saw the airport. Its metallic buildings and narrow runways were glittering. Beyond it was the jackrabbit and sage country.

He almost passed the motel before he saw it. A neon sign glowed palely in the sunlight illuminating its name—La Pueblo. Swank, he thought, almost as swank as the Porsche.

He pulled the car into the pebbled drive, parked beside a factory-fresh Cadillac and sat for a moment. He looked the place over, pleased with it.

To his right was the air-conditioned office. A man and woman sat inside. They stared at him but did not move. Outside the plate-glass window was a planting box of cacti and a stand of yucca beyond the entrance.

The small motel cottages were separate units, lined along a grass-plotted patio shaded with palms and a single cottonwood. Bright sun umbrellas were opened beside a swimming pool as blue as washwater. A lot of color, he thought, in this drab place. He admired all of it before he got out of the Porsche. When he unwound himself and stood beside the car, his face was expressionless. There was no sense in letting these people see how much better all this was than he was accustomed to.

He reached over into the rear of the Porche, lifted out the expensive leather suitcase that had impressed the hitchhiker. Hell, Ric thought, it impresses me. He rolled up the car windows, locked it. He gave it one last glance, admiring it even under its coating of dust that made it look as sweated and tired as he felt. Don’t worry, baby, he silently told the Porsche. You look at home in these swank surroundings, even if I don’t.

Ric walked slowly across the pebbled drive, the only sound the crunching of pebbles under his shoes. He was a tall slender man in his early thirties with a bitter hungriness in his face. He did not look like a gentle man; he was faintly ugly, and there was a toughness about him that the tailored jacket could not conceal or soften. He knew all this. He paused before he pushed open the office door, thinking about it. Anybody could see what he was. He was equally sure almost anyone could see he wasn’t what he wanted to be, just as he had none of the things he’d started out wanting.

He stepped out of the sunlight into the cool office, blinking. The air conditioning grasped at him and shook itself downward through his skin.

“Got a vacancy?” he said. His voice was low and even faintly apologetic. There were vacancies. Only one other car was parked outside. But in his time he’d been turned away from crummier joints than this.

“Sure.”

The man in the wicker chair was round, and his body was tilted so it fit the cool upholstery of the wicker chair. He did not move. His gaze went over Ric, to his suitcase and shoes.

“Come far today?”

Ric stood there with the suitcase. “Yes. Could I have a cottage, please?”

“Sure.” The man let his pink head roll slightly on the chair back. “Peggy. Let him sign. Give him number eight.”

“Which one is that?” Ric said. He glanced through the tinted window along the green patio.

“Last one down there on the right,” the man said. “It’ll be quiet down there. Real quiet. You look tired. Look like you could really use the rest.”

“Thanks.”

Ric pulled his gaze back to the room, batted it against the woman’s for a moment. When he saw what was in her eyes—the naked look in them—he looked away sharply though he knew she was amused because he did.

She was in her late thirties, well-built, slightly overweight with most of it in her breasts and hips. She wore neither bra nor girdle—she didn’t even control the look in her eyes.

“Sign this,” she said.

She pushed a white card across the glass top of the case, leaned against it, her arms pressing her breasts.

“That’s a slick car you’re driving,” the man said.

“Thanks.”

“Always wanted one of them little bugs. Really travel, won’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Saw you locking it before you came in.”

Ric’s head jerked up. “Yes?”

He glanced over his shoulder, gray eyes cold.

The man shrugged. “Nothing to me, but closed up in that sun—be like a blast furnace when you open it.”

“I guess so.”

“Am I right, Peggy?”

“It’s his car.”

“I’m just trying to tell him.”

“Thanks,” Ric said.

“Don’t have to lock anything around here,” the man said. “Friendly people. Friendliest people I ever met. Peggy and me, we came from southern Illinois. Never met people friendly like they are out here. Never lock a door.”

Ric looked up at the woman, pulled his gaze from her dress front. “That license number,” he said. “I don’t remember it. Never could remember license numbers.”

The man said, “It’s all right. We’ll fill all that in for you.”

Ric took a deep breath, signed his name. For a moment he stood looking at it. Ric Durazo. He turned the card slowly, watched the woman read it. Nothing happened. He exhaled. They had been right about this much anyhow. It was a long way from New York, longer even than he’d hoped.

“Want me to show you down to your cottage, Mr. Durazo?” Peggy said. It was naked in her voice now. He wondered how husbands could be so blind and deaf, and then decided maybe they got that way on purpose. Ten, twelve, fifteen years—it was a long time. Most women tired and bored him in three weeks, all except one, and that whole affair had been nothing but a joke on Ric Durazo right from the start.

He glanced at Peggy, saw the nakedness she wanted him to see. He shook his head, then took the key from her.

“No,” he said. “I can find it.”

Chapter Three

He stepped out of the office, feeling their gazes on his back and knowing what was in their faces without turning to look at them.

He looked both ways along the street. To the east was the shaded avenue of homes, west was the airport and the barren country. He stared at the airport for a moment, at the hills writhing faintly in the haze. Then he took another quick look around the motel grounds.

The car outside was a Cad with a California license plate. He read its number, and then read the number on the Porsche license, forgetting them instantly.

He turned and then followed the right walk along the patio. Ground sprinklers dribbled water on the plotted grass. It was cool and he felt slightly refreshed as he walked. He could forget the hundreds of cups of black coffee that had floated him from New York. Still, he held himself tautly, angered because he’d never learned to relax.

He inserted the key in cottage eight and stepped inside, feeling the kiss of air conditioning, the faint fresh odor of soap and disinfectant. He closed the door behind him and looked at the room—two deep easy chairs, a thick-mattressed bed, television set, gas wall furnace and a cool-looking tiled bath. He yawned despite the tensions in him and looked longingly at the bed.

He opened the Venetian blinds just enough to allow him a view of the patio and grounds. The cottage directly across from him was occupied. At the far side of it, he saw where the grass and landscaping ended and the brown of the desert began. Beside the other cottage was a round storage tank on a metal frame, bottled gas for the heating furnaces.

He smiled grimly, looking at the storage tank, the sagging clothes line beyond and the ugliness of the barren land beyond it. Why do I have to see the back of everything? he wondered turning away.

A shadow flickered along the walk and he stepped close to the window, watching it.

“Oh, hell,” he said aloud.

The knock on the door was almost coy.

He said, “Come in.”

Peggy came in and closed the door, cutting off the white blast of sunlight. “Ice cubes,” she said. “Mr. Davis thought you might want some.”

“Thanks.” He nodded toward the glass-topped dresser.

She walked by him, warm-scented, and set the container on the dresser. Then she turned, leaning against it.

“Anything you want, Mr. Durazo, you let me know.”

He watched her. “Yeah.”

She gave him a faint smile and a sidelong glance.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Why?”

“You act like it.”

His voice went cold. “Does it go with the price of the room? Or is it extra?”

“Damn you.” She lunged away from the dresser, her breasts bobbling against her dress front. “Where do you get off, talking to me like that?”

“Sorry. I’m tired and hot. I’d like to clean up.”

Her eyes did not soften. “Why’n’t you say so?”

She did not move to leave. Ric sighed. “You’ve got a nice place here, Mrs. Davis.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Takes a lot of work, all right. You ever try to make flowers grow in the desert?”

“Not in the last week.”

“You’re not friendly at all, are you?”

“No.”

“Nobody could accuse you of being friendly, all right.”

“No.”

“What’s the matter with you? You don’t like women?”

He exhaled, staring at her.

“Or is it you don’t like me? I’m not pretty enough for you? Women throw themselves all over you—and I’m not good enough?”

“You trying to get yourself talked about?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Hanging around here? What will people think? What’ll your husband say?”

“Who the hell cares? You try living in this god-forsaken desert three years and see if you care. Who’d talk? Who’d they talk to?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to make any trouble.”

She laughed. “Trouble. I’d welcome a little trouble. Stir things up.”

“Yeah.” He walked to the door, turned the knob. “But I don’t want any trouble. Not with anybody.”

She looked at him a long time, letting her puzzled gaze go over him slowly.

She walked to the door. “Where’d a guy like you ever get a Porsche?”

“I won it in a church raffle.”

She stared at him. “Didn’t you though?”

She closed the door behind her, a sharp final sound.

After she was gone he stood there for a moment without moving. Then he set the suitcase on the baggage stand but did not empty it into the dresser drawers. He dug around in it for a moment, came up with a laundered white shirt, undershirt and shorts. He found a pair of socks and tossed them on the bed.

He stared at himself in the mirror, unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. His face was streaked with dust, and there were beads of sweat under his eyes. He pulled his gaze away from himself, shrugging out of his coat. He tossed it over a chair. Then he sat on the bed, yawning.

A small smile of pleasure tugged at his mouth. He moved, bouncing on the bed. He lay back, feeling the mattress give, supporting him. He stared at the ceiling. His head rolled. Then almost as if afraid he would go to sleep, he sprang up from the bed, moving with the taut muscled grace of a panther.

He walked about the room, touching the furniture, the pictures on the walls. He sat in the easy chair, sinking into it and stretching his legs before him. He nodded, pleased, and began unbuttoning his shirt.

He pulled off his shoes and socks, loosened his trousers. He sat for a moment wriggling his toes, scratching his ribs. He thought about Peggy Davis, allowing his thoughts to wander, but to go no further than Peggy, into the past, or into the future.

After he undressed, he stood for a moment, listening. There were no sounds from outside the cottage; inside the only sound was his own breathing.

He walked into the bathroom, the tile cold and pleasant against his feet. He ran the tub full of water while he shaved. Then he lay in the tub until he almost fell asleep. He came fully awake with a start.

He got out of the tub then, rubbed ice cubes on his face and across the back of his neck. He dressed, staring at the silent patio through the Venetian blinds.

He checked his watch, wound it, went back to the easy chair. From the chair he could see only the front of the cottage across the patio. Somebody had tossed a brief green bathing suit across one of the lounge chairs over there.

He got up, snapped on the television set. He watched it only a moment. He tuned out the volume, left a woman sobbing silently on the picture tube. He watched the flashing movements for a few minutes but the silent pictures could not hold his interest for long.

That’s the wayThose that have ‘em don’t know what in hell to do with ‘em

He saw the sadness flicker in the girl’s face. But she did not say anything else. She spread a large towel beside the pool, loosened the straps on her bathing suit and lay down. She had no idea he was watching her, Ric knew, but there was a look about her that said she wouldn’t have cared if she’d known. She looked like money and breeding even in that bathing suit—even spilling out of it. Her tan was the color of old gold.

He watched her for a long time. She put on dark glasses, turned on her back, crinkling the suit back to her nipples. Ric yawned, the weariness like agony going through him. He was glad she was there. If she couldn’t keep him awake, nothing could.

Their cottage door opened. The handsome one came out, carrying an iced highball. Looking at it, Ric licked his lips. Handsome said something to the girl, but she shook her head.

Handsome knelt beside her, caught her arm, twisting until she sat up, catching her bathing suit across her breasts with her free arm.

They stared at each other for a long time. Ric saw that they were speaking tensely. Finally the girl took the highball and turned up the glass. She drank it off fast, without taking the glass from her lips. Then he pulled her to her feet and they went into the cottage. The door closed and Ric yawned.

He walked slowly to the bed, toppled across it. He was asleep in five minutes, whether he wanted to be or not.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three