Desperation

“Well.” the cop asked. He was smiling, and here was another thing not to like. It wasn’t a goony I’m-just-a-fan—in-love smile anymore, if it ever had been; there was something cold about it. Maybe contemptuous.

“Well, what.”

“Are you going to take care of it or not. Tak!”

His heart jumped. “Tak, what does that mean.”

“I didn’t say tak, you did. You said tak.”

The cop crossed his arms and stood smiling at him.

1want out of here, Joh

Yes, that was pretty much the bottom line, wasn’t it. And if that meant following orders, so be it. This little interlude, which had started off being fu

Suppose he means to hurt me. He’s pretty clearly a beer or two short of a sixpack.

Well, he answered himself, suppose he does. What are you going to do about it.

Complain to the local ki-yotes2 His overtrained imagination served up an extremely ugly image: the cop digging a hole in the desert, while in the shade of his cruiser lay the body of a man who had once won the National Book Award and fucked America’s most famous actress. He negated the image while it was little more than a sketch, not so much out of fear as by virtue of an odd protective arrogance. Men like him weren’t murdered, after all. They sometimes took their own lives, but they weren’t murdered, especially by i—2 psychotic fans. That was pulp-fiction bullshit.

There was John Le

Both of the saddlebag’s buckles were undone. Joh

Joh

“Oh, Joh

He reached in and picked up the gallon-sized Baggie lying on the pile of maps. Joh

“That’s not mine,” Joh

“Oh yeah, blame the cops,” the big man said, “just like in your pinko-liberal books, right. Man, I smelled the dope the second you got close to me. You reek of it! Tak!”

“Look—” Joh

“Get in the car, pinko! Get in the car, fag!” The voice indignant, the gray eyes full of laughter.

It’s a joke, Joh

Then, from somewhere off to the southwest, more howls rose—a tangle of them, this time—and when the cop’s eyes rolled in that direction and he gri

“My children of the desert!” the cop said. “The can toi! What music they make!”

He laughed, looked down at the Baggie of dope in his big hand, shook his head, and laughed even harder. Joh

“Travels with Harley,” the cop said. “Do you know what a stupid name for a book that is. What a stupid con-cept it is. And to plunder the literary legacy of John Steinbeck… a writer whose shoes you aren’t fit to lick… that makes me mad.”

And before Joh

Well, it hadn’t been a door or a sign, and it hadn’t exactly exploded, but it had certainly undergone a swift and radical change. He thought these things in what seemed to be perfectly co-herent fashion even while his mouth went on screaming.

“In fact, it makes me furious,” the cop said, and kicked him high up on the left thigh. The pain came in a sheet that sank in like acid and turned the big muscles in his leg—to stone. Joh

“The trUth is it makes me sick with rage,” the cop said, and kicked Joh

“Get up,” the cop said. “On your feet, Lord Jim.”

“I can’t,” Joh

“On your feet, you piece of shit. You’re in my house now, the house of the wolf and the scorpion, and you better not forget it.”

“I can’t, you broke my leg, Jesus Christ you hurt me so bad—”

“Your leg’s not broken and you don’t know what being hurt is yet. Now get up.”

“I can’t. I really—”

The gunshot was deafening, the ricochet of the slug off the road a monstrous wasp—whine, and Joh

“Hey bigshot, you wet your pants,” the cop said.

Joh