WEST ON 66 Read online

  WEST ON

  66

  JAMES H. COBB

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS

  ST. MARTIN'S MINOTAUR

  NEW YORK

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

  west on 66. Copyright © 1999 by James H. Cobb. All rights reserved. Priiied in the

  United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproducedin any mar,

  ner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotitions u11"

  embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martits Press 17'

  Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. 7#

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Map illustrations by Jackie Aher

  To the truckers, patrolmen, and tourists.

  To the keepers of motels and the keepers of faiths.

  To the tellers of truths and the tellers of tales.

  To all of the Road Warriors everywhere

  who know the magic of Route 66.

  Also

  to James Dean and Natalie Wood. Like the Mother Road, legends go on forever.

  ILLINOIS

  In leaving Chicago on US 66, you will find the route plainly marked through city streets, running southwest from the Loop district . . .

  On the radio, the Platters sang "The Great Pretender" to a lightning static backbeat. It was September in the Year of Our Lord 1957, and a storm was rolling in from Lake Michigan. The heavy overcast had turned the city gray—gray buildings, a gray lakefront, a gray beach with gray waves sullenly nuzzling against it. Only the traffic signal on Lake Shore Drive hadn't been infected yet, and its red didn't look too healthy as the '57 and I rolled up to it.

  A porthole Tendered Buick sedan sat in the outside lane. As I waited out the light, I glanced over and noted its business-suited driver gingerly giving us the eye.

  I knew what he was seeing. The car, a sleek and souped-up black-and-white Chevrolet hardtop, riding high-tailed and bel­ligerent with an ominous rumble in her twin pipes. The driver, lean and leather-jacketed, with too-long brown hair combed back, a young punk like the writer had warned about in that "This Generation Is Going to Hell" article in Collier's last week.

  And was this the reality? Close enough, I guess. I blipped the gas pedal, and the '57 snarled, scaring the eyes of the Buick driver forward again.

  Slouching behind the wheel, I wondered again just what I'd hoped to find back here in Chicago. Whatever it was, I hadn't found it. There had been a tract house I'd never seen before and a young sister-in-law who had struggled heroically to be a good hostess to a total stranger. There had been a niece in the toddler stage who didn't have a clue about who this new guy was supposed to be. And finally, there had been an older brother I really didn't recognize anymore.

  It was my fault, I guess. Maybe if I'd come to visit a couple of years ago, things could have been different. Maybe if I'd even been able to get back when our folks had died. But that hadn't been in the books, either. I'd been inhabiting a frozen mud bunker just short of the thirty-ninth parallel when Dad had been killed in that yarding accident. And when pneumonia had gotten Mom, I'd been working deep cover in a high school out around Glendora, trying to get a lead on a marijuana dealer who was recruiting part-time sales help from the local student body.

  Frank had followed Dad into railroading. Me, I'd enlisted in the army straight out of high school. Frank had settled down, making Chicago his home. I'd volunteered for Airborne, doing a tour on the line in Korea and then another as an MP in Japan. Frank got married and started a family. I'd taken a liking to police work and had signed on with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department after getting my service discharge.

  Somewhere along the line, Frank and I had stopped living in the same world. Now he had the house and the wife and the kid, while I had the stories about making a combat jump out of a C-119, walking a midnight beat in the Ginza, and being one of Marilyn Monroe's bodyguards at her latest movie pre­miere.

  Which one of us had it the best? Hell, I don't know. We just didn't have it the same anymore. I'd taken three weeks off to come back and get reacquainted, but it hadn't worked out so well. Things went fine for the first three days. But by day four, we'd run out of old times to reminisce about.

  It's not good to only live in the past with a brother. You need some here and now to balance things out.

  This morning, on day five, I'd packed my gear and headed for the door. A big break on an important case out on the coast, I'd said, lying politely. I had to get back. Frank and his wife politely said they were sorry to see me go and promised that next year it was their turn to come out to Los Angeles. It could happen, I guess.

  Before I left town, there were a couple of last things I'd had to take care of. For one, I drove out to Graceland Cemetery and said a private good-bye to Mom and Dad. I owed them an apology for not being there when it was time for them to move on. Dad understood. He was always very big on a man doing his duty. And Mom, she'd forgive you anything. I also prom­ised that Frank and I would somehow find something in com­mon again one of these days. They seemed to be satisfied with

  that.

  Afterward, I'd driven around town for a couple of hours, just to see if I could pick up the feel of the place again. I couldn't. Chicago had never really been a hometown to me. Dad's job with the GM&O had kept us moving from one whistle-stop along the Alton route to another for just about all of my life. Chicago meant only a senior year in high school and a recruiter's station. Then, too, Los Angeles has spoiled me for living in a stacked-up city. The narrow urban canyons along the Loop give me claustrophobia now.

  The stoplight went green. For a second I considered re-spooking the guy in the Buick by breaking traction and burning a little rubber as I pulled away from the intersection. I relented, though, satisfying myself with the '57's clean surge of accel­eration.

  My gas tank was full. My bags (one B-4, one sleeping) were in the backseat, and there was nothing else in this town that I needed except for a way out.

  I found one at the head of Adams Boulevard, a block beyond the entrance to Grant Park. Once it had been called the Old Joliet Road. At another time, it had been the Pontiac Trail. Now it was marked in a flash of black on a white shield.

  Illinois

  US

  Route 66

  Appropriately enough, Bill Haley and the Comets took over from the Platters with "See You Later, Alligator." A good road omen. It was time to head for home, my real one. I hung a right and aimed us down Adams. The baritone purr of the '57's engine seemed to grow more contented as we followed the shields west through the grimy shade of the city's streets.

  We cleared Al Capone's old stomping ground in Cicero just ahead of the cresting rush hour traffic, then on around the Joliet bypass, riding the four-lane through Wilmington and past the rail yards and the workingmen's neighborhoods. Out beyond Joliet, the pastures and cornfields began to outnumber the junk­yards and the factories along the roadway, and the big-town sprawl became a dissipating smear across the bottom of my rearview mirrors. I edged the speedometer needle five miles over the limit, and the '57 and I began to seriously kill some road.

  The '57 is the only major vice I can afford on a deputy's salary. We've been together for close to a year now, ever since I found her sitting forlornly in the county impound yard with a smashed grill and a crumpled front fender. Some doting daddy out Sepulvida way had bought her fresh off the train from Detroit as a birthday present for his teenage son. Three weeks later, carrying a cargo of empty beer bottles, sonny boy had put his new wheels into a palm tree and himself into the hospital. Daddy was going to be tied up with medical expenses and lawyer's fees for a while, so he was more than pleased to let me take over the pay
ments. After I'd gotten the papers signed, I'd had her towed out to Don Blair's legendary speed shop in Pomona. There we started having fun.

  Sonny boy might have been a drunk-driving dork, but he'd known something about fast cars. He'd asked Daddy for a One-Fifty Series, two-door centerpost sedan. Most of the stock car teams running Chevys use this model because it's both the lightest and the strongest chassis Chevrolet makes. Then he'd gone down the options list and had checked off the entire Cor­vette performance package for the new 283-cubic-inch Tur-bofire V-8: 9.51 compression ratio, mechanical lifters, a Duntov cam and valve set, duel exhausts with tuned ramshead headers, and twin Carter four-barreled carburetors on an aluminum competition manifold. The whole nine yards.

  But no matter how good something is, you can always make it better. While the bodywork was being straightened out, Dollar-a-Deal Don's guys and I pulled the engine and knocked it down to the nuts and bolts.

  We gave her a full porting and polishing job, smoothing the valve seats and widening and buffing the intake and exhaust ports in the heads so she could breathe easier. Junking the fac­tory mufflers, we replaced them with a set of Porter steel packs and installed a crossover pipe. Then we dropped in an alumi­num flywheel and added one of Dean Moon's custom dual-point distributor and ignition systems.

  We blueprinted the entire mill from the pan up, minutely examining every component for possible flaws and Magnaflux-testing the critical ones. Then we put it all back together, de-burring, balancing, and polishing as we went, trueing it far beyond its factory specifications. When we finished closing that engine up again, it was more totally right then anything ever conceived on an assembly line

  I went underneath next and did a few things to help keep the rubber on the road. The shifter assembly for the close-ratio three-speed transmission went from the steering column to a Corvette-style floor stick, and the battery was moved to a battery box in the trunk to help centralize the weight distri­bution. I shod her with Goodyear Blue Streak racing tires mounted on NASCAR-rated six-lug competition wheels, and then I beefed up the suspension—stabilizer bars fore and aft, extra extended-length leaves in the outrigger springs in back, heavier coil springs in front, and stiffer Gabriel shocks all the way around.

  Some of these latter items required a little handshaking around the LA County motor pool. They were lifted out of a Chevrolet "Police Interceptor" parts package and were in­tended for use on official police vehicles only.

  Well, hell, I'm officially police.

  I'd lived on cornflakes and macaroni and cheese all last win­ter. It was worth it, though. Car and I have put together some­thing of a reputation out at the drag strips at Pomona and Paradise Mesa. And on other less formal occasions back up in the Hollywood Hills, we've left the owner of more than one Coupe DeVille and SK-model Jag wondering just why in the hell he'd wasted all that money.

  More seriously, the '57 has served me well as part of the young badass cover I've built for myself doing plainclothes work for LA County Metro. It doesn't look like a cop car, and most of the time I don't look like a cop. We match.

  Pontiac, then Bloomington, the tires thudding rhythmically on the expansion ridges between the concrete road slabs. Flat-lands and farms, the fall's harvest being lifted out of the choc­olate cake soil. The pretty good Chicago rock 'n' roll station I'd been listening to faded on me, and I made do with some pretty poor country out of Springfield. Funk's Grove and miles of maple forest flamed dully in the dying light of a fall day, the sunset buried behind a wall of clouds.

  As I was rolling through McLean, the storm I'd been trying to outrun finally caught up with me, and I turned on my wind­shield wipers and headlights at the same time. My stomach also reminded me that lunch had been a long time back.

  A cafe on the little town's main street had a sign promising "genuine home cooking" in its rain-spotted front window. And who knows? Maybe they could've actually delivered. However, I preferred the sure thing south of town to the gamble.

  Ahead, alongside the big road, there was a low, sprawling clapboard building, a drowsing herd of parked truck and trailer rigs, and a scarlet banner of neon advertising the Dixie Trucker's Home.

  The Dixie is an icon on 66. It just might have been the first true truck stop in the United States. A lot of its regular patrons say that it's still one of the best. God knows it's sure one of the busiest. On a good Saturday, a thousand people a night might pass through here. This was a rainy evening in mid week, though, and the stop's broad parking lots were two-thirds empty.

  I topped off the '57's tank with ethyl at the car pumps. Then I found a parking place well away from the clustered vehicles around the restaurant. There was no sense in running the risk of having some road-dopey PIE driver back his rig into my wheels. Breathing in the rain-freshened air, I crossed to the restaurant, my old jump boots crunching on the wet gravel.

  As I pushed through the door, a blast of warmth hit me along with that unique combination of sights, scents, and sounds that mark a real trucker's "choke & puke": Monel metal and raw diesel, scarred Naugahyde and cigarette smoke, hot bacon grease, and Patsy Cline on the jukebox.

  There was also an invisible line drawn down the linoleum of the big, brightly lit dining room. On one side were the mere mortals, the tourist families, the traveling salesmen, and the locals out for a supper away from the home table. On the other were the elite, the long-haul drivers, big, weary men who leaned in over their coffee cups, seeking a break from the kidney-hammering vibration of the highway.

  Once, so they say, the Dixie's management had set aside an entirely separate dining area just for truck drivers. The truckers hadn't liked that much. They'd felt as if they were being dis­criminated against. So the one big room had been restored and the truckers had contentedly gone back to segregating them­selves once more, assured of their proper place in the world.

  I seated myself on the mortal side of the room, and a comfortable-looking middle-aged waitress brought me a cup of coffee as if there weren't any other beverage worth considering on a stormy night on the big road. The hamburger steak looked good, and I said so, with fries.

  The waitress hustled away and I took my first contented sip of a hot black brew strong enough to idle a Kenworth on. I was starting to get my vacation back. Being on the move again had erased the dissatisfaction of Chicago.

  I'd blitzed Route 66 on the way out from Los Angeles, push­ing the '57 and covering the twenty-four hundred odd miles in only five days. I had twice as much time to get back in. What to do with it?

  The steak showed up, and the first forkful jump-started my enthusiasm. The old traveler's tale about always stopping to eat where the truckers do might not be valid elsewhere, but it definitely applies to the food at the Dixie.

  OK, I had some free days on my hands. Why not wander around some? Why not drink a little beer and listen to a little rockabilly in a few roadhouses? Why not hang around a few speed shops and talk a little car? Why not run a little back road "five dollars a gear" with some of the local talent?

  Why not find a girl?

  Maybe like the one who just came in through the door.

  She was only average height, but she carried herself tall. She had that pale, creamy brunette's skin, and when she flipped back the hood of her car coat I could see that her glossy hair was the color of well-polished saddle leather. Her eyes were dark as well, with an onyx glint to them you could note clear across the room, dominating a face that was both delicate and strong.

  She was maybe five years younger than me. Twenty-one to my twenty-six, balanced right on that knife-edge between girl and woman. Youthful enough so that a ponytail still suited her, yet old enough to know how to walk in heels.

  She was alone and beautiful, and you could bet safe money that every male eye in that restaurant, including mine, tracked her as she crossed to the counter. But that's all we did, for she radiated an air of cool self-possession that went a long way beyond anything you might expect from someone her age. It was
as though she entered that room knowing that there wasn't a damn thing there that was going to impress her. She took the end stool, the one that would let her keep her back to the wall, and slammed down an invisible barrier between herself and the rest of us.

  Caging a light for a cigarette from the appreciative counter­man, she sat very still for a little while, her eyes lowered and half-closed as if she was marshaling her strength. Then she drew herself up once more, giving her cloak of regal invulner­ability a tug back into place. She glanced around the room and took what looked like a stenographer's notebook or sketch pad out of her shoulder bag. Slipping a pencil from the wire coil across the top of the pad, she flipped it open, focusing on it.

  Writing? No, not with the way her hand swept across the page. Drawing.

  I returned my attention to my hamburger steak, my overt attention anyway. But ignore her? Uh-uh, Jack. Even as I got my glands back under control, my "cop's eyes" began to notice the subtleties.

  She'd walked in. Her coat was almost soaked through, and there was mud caked on her expensive pumps, shoes that weren't meant for a hike on a stormy night. Her pleated plaid skirt and matching wine red sweater were new and of high quality. But they had that slightly rumpled and stale look of clothing that's been worn for too long at a single stretch. The girl also carried that slightly self-conscious air of someone who likes to look good but who knows that she's not at her best.

  Then there were the shadows under her eyes. Short of sleep. And the careful way she counted the change in her purse before ordering. Short of money.

  Most of all, though, I noted the air of wariness about her. When she had entered, she had paused for a moment and care­fully "read the room," verifying that there was no one here except for a crowd of harmless strangers. And now, whenever the door opened her head came up, alert for whoever might be coming through.

  I'd seen that look before, plenty of times. All lawmen have.