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If he's smart, that is. Me, I'm dumb as a box of rocks and my skull felt like a ca
I fell backward, still trapped to my knees in wet earth, padded hammers of rain smashing along the length of my body, and screamed. The spasm passed, leaving only the parched desert plains inside every inch of me.
A few moments of effort got me kicking free, the last of the wet clay collapsing in a body-shaped hole now that the body was above ground. I opened my mouth, rain beating my dirty face, and got only a mouthful of muck.
Coughing, gagging, I made it to hands and knees. My head was a swollen pumpkin balanced on a thin aching stick, and the headache receded between waves of scorching, unbearable, agonizing
thirst.
There were pines all around me, singing and sighing as the sodden wind slapped them around. It took me two tries to stand up, and another two tries before I remembered my name.
Jack. Jack Becker. That's me. That's who I am.
And I've got to find the dame in the green dress.
Outside the city limits and I'm a duck out of water. The mud wouldn't dry, not in this downpour, it just kept smearing over the ruin of my shirt and suit pants. Even Chin Yun's laundry wouldn't be able to get it out of the worsted. Slogging and slipping, I made it down a hill the size of the Chrysler building and found the dirt road turned off the highway, and there was a mile marker right there.
Twelve miles to the city. Cramps screamed from my empty belly. Maybe getting shot in the head works up a man's appetite. Every time I reached up to touch my noggin it was tender, a puckered hole above my right eye full of even more mud.
I wasn't going to get far. The idea of stumbling off the side of the road and drowning in a ditch was appealing-except for the dame in the green dress.
Think about that, Jack. One thing at a time.
Thunder rumbled somewhere far away. Miss Dale would be at home, probably talking to her cat or making a nice hot cup of tea. The thought made my insides clench like they were going to turn into a meat grinder, and my breath made a fu
That was when I saw the light.
It was beautiful, it was golden, it was a diner. Not just any diner, but the Denton's Dandy Diner, eleven miles from the city limits. I couldn't go in there looking like this. It took me a while to fumble for my wallet and I nearly ended up in the ditch anyway, my feet tangling together.
The wallet-last year's Christmas present from Miss Dale-was still in my pocket and held all the usuals, plus nineteen dollars and twenty cents. They hadn't taken any money. Interesting.
Think about that later, Jack.
My shirt was wet enough to shed the mud, my suit jacket nowhere in evidence. Stinging pellets warned me the rain was turning to ice.
But the crazy thing was, I wasn't cold. Just thirsty as hell. Maybe the idea of the dame in green was warming me up.
Neon blinked in the diner's windows. It was closed, goddammit, and just when I could have used a phone. I could even
see the phone box, smearing my muddy mitts on the window and blinking every time the Cold Drinks sign blinked as well. The phone was at the end of the hall, right near the crapper.
My legs nearly gave out.
This is turning out to be a bad night, Jackie boy.
I found a rock I could lift without busting myself and heaved it. The glass on the door went to pieces, and I carefully unlocked it. The long slugtrail of mud I left toward the phone might have been fu
A man like me knows his secretary's home number. Any dame dumb enough to work for a case like me probably wouldn't be out dancing at a nightclub. Dale didn't have any suitors-not that she talked, of course. She was a tall thin number with interesting eyes, but that was as far as it went.
Not like the dame in green, no sir.
I hung onto the phone box with fingers that looked swollen and bruised. Dirt still slimed my palms. Under it I was fishbelly white, almost glowing in the dim lighting. The Dentons were going to find their diner not quite so dandy in the cold light of dawn, and I was sorry about that.
"Hello?" She repeated herself, because I was trying to make my mouth work. "Hello?"
"Dale," I managed through the obstruction in my mouth. Sounded like they'd broken my jaw, or like I was sucking on candy.
"Mr. Becker?" A note of alarm, now. "
Jack?"
"You got to come pick me up, dollface." I sounded drunk.
"Where have you-oh, never mind. Where are you?" I could almost see her perched on her settee, that cup of tea steaming gently on an endtable, and her ever-present steno pad appearing. "Jack? Where are you right
now?"
"Denton," I managed. "Dandy Diner, about eleven miles out of the city. You got the keys to my Studebaker?"
"Your car is impounded, Mr. Becker." Now she sounded like the Miss Dale I knew. Cool, calm, efficient. Over the phone she sounded smoky and sinful, just like Bacall. I might've hired her just for that phone voice alone, but she turned out to be damned efficient and not likely to yammer her yap off all the time, which meant I paid her even when I couldn't eat.
You don't find secretaries like that every day, after all.
"Never mind, I'll bring my car. Denton's Dandy, hm? That's west out of town, right?"
"Sure it is." My legs buckled again, I hung onto the box for all I was worth. "I'll be waiting out front."
"I'm on my way." And she hung up, just like that.
What a gal.
The pain in my gut crested as Miss Dale peered over the seat. I'd barely managed to get the door open, and as soon as I was in the car she took off; I wrestled the door shut and the windshield wipers made their idiot sound for about half a mile as I lay gasping in the back seat.
The car smelled like Chanel No. 5 and Chesterfields. And it smelled of Miss Dale, of hairspray and powder and a thousand other feminine things you usually have to get real close to a dame to get a whiff of. It also smelled like something else.
Something warm, and coppery, and salty, and so good. The windshield wipers went ka-thump ka-thump, and her Ford must've had something going on with the engine, because there was another regular thumping, high and hard and fast. My mouth wouldn't close all the way. I kept making that wheezing sound, and she finally risked another look over the seat at me.
"I'm taking you to Samaritan General," she said, and I stared at the sheen of her dark hair. "You sound terrible."
"No." Thank God, it was one word I could say without whatever was wrong with my mouth interfering. "No hospital." The slurring was back, like my jaw was broken but I wasn't feeling any pain. As a matter of fact, now that the headache was gone, the only thing bothering me was how
thirsty I was.
Another mile squished under the tires. She turned the defroster up, and that regular thumping sounded like her car was about to explode, it was going so fast. "Mr. Becker, you are begi
It was Miss Dale's pulse. I was hearing her heartbeat. And the tires touching the road. And each raindrop smacking the hardtop. The hiss of flame as she lit the cigarette showed the fine sheen of sweat on her forehead, and I realized Miss Dale was nervous.