Free Nightwork by Joseph Hansen Page B

all?”
    “Maybe not.” Sandwich and drink finished, Dave wiped fingers and mouth with his napkin, took Cecil’s empty glass and his own with his plate to the tray on the chest. “Whoever he was, the woman with him was no nurse. She was the same one who showed up with goons at the Myers house three weeks later.”
    “The ones who beat her up?” Cecil said.
    “You’ve got it.” Dave picked up his jacket and shrugged into it. “I have to take the Jaguar down to the agency so they can replace that window.” He dug from the jacket pocket the crumpled flimsies he had taken from the drawer under Paul Myers’s bedroom closet. He hesitated. “You want to rest while I’m gone, or you want to do some work?”
    Cecil reached for the papers. “Busy hands,” he said, “are happy hands.” He began separating the papers, frowning at them. “What are these? What do I do?”
    “Telephone those companies. Get hold of whoever is in charge of shipping. Get out of them, if you can, whether Paul Myers was hauling anything except what’s listed on those manifests. What did they think of Myers? Did any of them know him? If so, did they know who he was moonlighting for, what he was hauling? Anything, everything.”
    “Do I pretend I’m you again?” Cecil said.
    Dave grinned. “If it’s not too much of a strain on your natural femininity.”
    Cecil threw a pillow at him.
    Dave laughed and carried the tray down the stairs.
    On sun-scorched lots where weeds grew through the asphalt, and faded plastic pennons fluttered from sagging wires overhead, he looked at battered cars not quite but almost ready for the junkyard. Two or three he test-drove. They bucked and gasped through trash-blown neighborhoods of desolate lumberyards, warehouses, and shacky motels, while salesmen in polyester doubleknit suits breathed mouthwash fumes beside him, lying about mileage, lifetime batteries, and recent overhauls. In the end, he escaped Culver City in a 1969 two-door Valiant. A sideswipe had creased it deeply from front to back. Its crackly plastic upholstery leaked stuffing. But its gears worked, the engine ran smoothly, and the tires still had treads. It was a vague beige color, a hole gaped where its radio had been, and Dave pried loose and handed to the surprised salesman its one remaining hubcap before he drove off. The car labored up the canyon, but it didn’t overheat. And when he left it parked on the leaf-strewn bricks of his tree-shady yard where the Jaguar customarily stood, he felt good. No one in Gifford Gardens would give this car a second look.
    This time he fixed double martinis in the cookshack. And when he carried them into the rear building, music was in the air—Miles Davis, “Sketches of Spain.” The ice in the hefty glasses jingled as he carried them up the stairs. The flimsies in their pale pinks, blues, yellows, lay spread out on the sheet across Cecil’s legs. He told the telephone receiver “thank you” and put it back in its cradle. He reached for the martini and gave his beautiful head with its short-cropped hair a rueful shake.
    “Not one of these companies shipped anything with Paul Myers but what’s listed on these manifests.” He patted the papers. “They all liked him. He was reliable, friendly, intelligent.” Cecil sipped the martini, hummed, and for a moment shut his eyes in unwordable appreciation. “They are all sorry he’s dead, but nobody can guess what he was hauling at night up in that canyon before he crashed.” Cecil held the glass up in a salute to Dave, who was shedding his sweaty clothes. “You came back just in time. I was about to die of temperance up here, all alone by the telephone.”
    “Sorry about that, but when you hear what I’ve done, you’ll be proud of me.” Dave sat on the foot of the bed, perched his drink on the loft railing, shed shoes and socks. “I bought a jalopy to drive in Gifford Gardens. A genuine eyesore.” He tried his martini. Better than usual. Most