Mr. Vertigo (26 page)

“California,” I said. “It never snows there, and you can swim in the ocean all year round. From what folks say, it’s the next best thing to paradise. Makes Florida look like a muggy swamp by comparison.”

“No place is perfect, kid,” the master said. “Don’t forget the earthquakes and the mudslides and the droughts. They can go for years without rain there, and when that happens, the whole state turns into a tinderbox. Your house can burn down in less time than it takes to flip an egg.”

“Don’t worry about that. Six months from now, we’ll be living in a stone castle. That stuff can’t burn—but just to play it safe, we’ll have our own fire department on the premises. I’m telling you, boss, the flicks and me was made for each other. I’m going to rake in so much dough, we’ll have to open a new bank. The Rawley Savings and Loan, with national headquarters on Sunset Boulevard. You watch and see. In no time at all, I’m going to be a star.”

“If everything goes well, you’ll be able to earn your crust of
bread. That’s the important thing. It’s not as if I’m going to be around forever, and I want to make sure you can fend for yourself. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Actor, cameraman, messenger boy—one trade’s as good as another. I just need to know there’ll be a future for you after I’m gone.”

“That’s old man talk, master. You ain’t even fifty yet.” “Forty-six. Where I come from, that’s pretty long in the tooth.” “Swizzle sticks. You get out in that California sun, it’ll add ten years to your life the first day.”

“Maybe so. But even if it does, I still have more years behind me than in front of me. It’s simple mathematics, Walt, and it can’t do us any harm to prepare for what’s ahead.”

We switched onto another subject after that, or maybe we just stopped talking altogether, but those dark little comments of his loomed larger and larger to me as the days dragged on. For a man who worked so hard at hiding his feelings, the master’s words were tantamount to a confession. I’d never heard him open up like that before, and even though he couched it in a language of what ifs and what thens, I wasn’t so stupid as to ignore the message buried between the lines. My thoughts went back to the stomach-clutching scene in the New Haven hotel. If I hadn’t been so bogged down with my own troubles since then, I would have been more vigilant. Now, with nothing better to, do than stare out the window and count the days until we got to California, I resolved to watch his every move. I wasn’t going to be a coward this time. If I caught him grimacing or grabbing his stomach again, I was going to speak up and call his bluff—and hustle him to the first doctor I could find.

He must have noticed my worry, for not long after that conversation, he clamped down on the gloom-and-doom talk and started whistling a different song. By the time we left Texas and crossed into New Mexico, he seemed to perk up considerably,
and alert as I was for signs of trouble, I couldn’t detect a single one—not even the smallest hint. Little by little, he managed to pull the wool over my eyes again, and if not for what happened seven or eight hundred miles down the road, it would have been months before I suspected the truth, perhaps even years. Such was the master’s power. No one could match him in a battle of wits, and every time I tried, I wound up feeling like a horse’s ass. He was so much quicker than I was, so much defter and more experienced, he could fake me out of my pants before I even put them on. There was never any contest. Master Yehudi always won, and he went on winning to the bitter end.

The most tedious part of the trip began. We spent days riding through New Mexico and Arizona, and after a while it felt like we were the only people left in the world. The master was fond of the desert, however, and once we entered that barren landscape of rocks and cacti, he kept pointing out curious geological formations and delivering little lectures on the incalculable age of the earth. To be perfectly honest, it left me pretty cold. I didn’t want to spoil the master’s fun, so I kept my mouth shut and pretended to listen, but after four thousand buttes and six hundred canyons, I’d had enough of the scenic tour to last me a lifetime.

“If this is God’s country,” I finally said, “then God can have it.”

“Don’t let it get you down,” the master said. “It goes on forever out here, and counting the miles won’t shorten the trip. If you want to get to California, this is the road we have to take.”

“I know that. But just because I put up with it don’t mean I have to like it.”

“You might as well try. The time will go faster that way.”

“I hate to be a party pooper, sir, but this beauty stuff’s a great big ho-hum. I mean, who cares if a place looks crummy or not?
As long as it’s got some people in it, it’s bound to be interesting. Subtract the people, and what’s left? Emptiness, that’s what. And emptiness don’t do a thing for me but lower my blood pressure and make my eyelids droop.”

“Then close your eyes and get some sleep, and I’ll commune with nature myself. Don’t fret, little man. It won’t be long now. Before you know it, you’ll have all the people you want.”

The darkest day of my life dawned in western Arizona on November sixteenth. It was a bone-dry morning like all the others, and by ten o’clock we were crossing the California border to begin our glide through the Mojave toward the coast. I let out a little whoop of celebration when we passed that milestone and then settled in for the last leg of the journey. The master was clipping along at a nice speed, and we figured we’d make it to Los Angeles in time for dinner. I remember arguing in favor of a swank restaurant for our first night in town. Maybe we’d run into Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, I said, and wouldn’t that be a thrill, huh? Imagine shaking hands with those guys over a mound of baked Alaska in some posh supper club. If they were in the mood for it, maybe we could get into a pie fight and tear the joint apart. The master was just beginning to laugh at my description of this screwy scene when I looked up and saw something on the road in front of us. “What’s that?” I said. “What’s what?” the master said. And a couple of moments later, we were running for our lives.

The
what
was a gang of four men spread out across the narrow turnpike. They were standing in a row—two, three hundred yards up ahead—and at first it was tough to make them out. What with the glare from the sun and the heat rising off the ground, they looked like specters from another planet, shimmering bodies made of light and thin air. Fifty yards closer, and I could see that their hands were raised over their heads, as if they were
signaling us to stop. At that point I took them for a crew of road workers, and even when we got still closer and I saw that they had handkerchiefs over their faces, I didn’t think twice about it. It’s dusty out here, I said to myself, and when the wind blows a man needs some protection. But then we were sixty or seventy yards away, and suddenly I could see that all four of them were holding shiny metal objects in their upraised hands. Just when I realized they were guns, the master slammed on the brakes, skidded to a stop, and threw the car into reverse. Neither one of us said a word. Gas pedal to the floor, we backed up with the engine whining and the chassis shaking. The four desperadoes took off after us, running up the road as their gun barrels glinted in the light. Master Yehudi had turned his head in the other direction to look through the rear window, and he couldn’t see what I saw, but as I watched the men gaining ground on us, I noticed that one of them ran with a limp. He was a scrawny, chicken-necked sack of bones, but in spite of his handicap he moved faster than the others. Before long, he was out in the lead by himself, and that was when the handkerchief slipped off his face and I got my first real look at him. Dust was flying in all directions, but I would have known that mug anywhere. Edward J. Sparks. The one and only was back, and the moment I laid eyes on Uncle Slim, I knew my life was ruined forever.

I shouted through the noise of the straining engine: “They’re catching up to us! Turn around and go forward! They’re close enough to shoot!”

It was a rough call. We couldn’t go fast enough in reverse to get away, and yet the time it took to turn around would slow us down even more. But we had to risk it. If we didn’t increase our speed in about four seconds, we wouldn’t have a chance.

Master Yehudi swung out sharply to the right, angling into a frantic, backwards U-turn as he shifted into first. The gears made
a hideous, grinding noise, the back wheels jumped off the edge of the road and hit some stray rocks, and then we were spinning, flailing without traction as the car groaned and shook. It took a second or two before the tires caught hold again, and by the time we shot out of there with our nose pointed in the right direction, the guns were coughing behind us. One shell snagged a back tire, and the instant the rubber blew out, the Pierce Arrow lurched wildly to the left. The master rolled with it and never lifted his foot from the floor. Steering like a madman to keep us on the road, he was already shifting into third when another bullet came blasting through the back window. He let out a howl, and his hands flew off the steering wheel. The car bucked off the road, bounced onto the rock-strewn desert floor, and a moment later blood started gushing out of his right shoulder. God knows where he found the strength, but he managed to grab hold of the wheel again and give it another try. It wasn’t his fault that it didn’t work. The car was careening out of control by then, and before he could get us turned back toward the road, the left front tire skidded up the ramp of a large protruding stone and the whole machine tipped over.

The next hour was a blank. The jolt flung me out of my seat, and the last thing I remember is flying through the air in the master’s direction. Somewhere between takeoff and landing, I must have clunked my head against the dashboard or steering wheel, for by the time the car stopped moving, I was already out cold. Dozens of things happened after that, but I missed them all. I missed seeing Slim and his men swoop down on the car and rob us of the strongbox in the trunk. I missed seeing them slash the other three tires. I missed seeing them open our suitcases and scatter our clothes on the ground. Why they didn’t shoot us after that is still something of a mystery to me. They must have talked about whether to kill us or not, but I heard
nothing of what they said and can’t begin to speculate on why we were spared. Maybe we looked dead already, or maybe they just didn’t give a damn. They had the strongbox with all our money in it, and even if we were still breathing when they left, they probably figured we’d die from our injuries anyway. If there was any comfort in being robbed of every cent we had, it came from the smallness of the sum they walked off with. Slim must have thought we had millions. He must have been counting on a once-in-a-lifetime jackpot, but all he got from his efforts was a paltry twenty-seven thousand dollars. Split that into four, and the shares didn’t add up to much. No more than a pittance, really, and it made me glad to think about his disappointment. For years and years, it warmed my soul to imagine how crushed he must have been.

I think I was out for an hour—but it could have been more than that, it could have been less. However long it was, when I woke up I found myself lying on top of the master. He was still unconscious, and the two of us were wedged against the door on the driver’s side, limbs tangled together and our clothes soaked in blood. The first thing I saw when my eyes blinked into focus was an ant marching over a small stone. My mouth was filled with crumbled bits of dirt, and my face was jammed flat against the ground. That was because the window had been open at the time of the crash, and I suppose that was a piece of luck, if
luck
is a word that can be used in describing such things. At least my head hadn’t gone through the glass. There was that to be thankful for, I suppose. At least my face hadn’t been cut to shreds.

My forehead hurt like hell and my body was bruised all over, but no bones were broken. I found that out when I stood up and tried to open the door above me. If any real damage had been done, I wouldn’t have been able to move. Still, it wasn’t easy to
push that thing out on its hinges. It weighed half a ton, and what with the strange tilt of the car and the difficulty of getting any leverage on it, I must have struggled for five minutes before clambering through the hatch. Warm air hit my face, but it felt cool after the sweatbox confines of the Pierce Arrow. I sat on my perch for a couple of seconds, spitting out dirt and sucking in the languid breeze, but then my hands slipped, and the moment I touched the red-hot surface of the car, I had to jump off. I crashed to the ground, picked myself up, and began staggering around the car to the other side. On the way, I caught sight of the open trunk and noticed that the money box was missing, but since that was already a foregone conclusion, I didn’t pause to think about it. The left side of the car had landed on a stone outcrop, and there was a small space between the ground and the door—about six or eight inches. It wasn’t wide enough to stick my head through, but by lying flat on the ground I could see far enough inside to get a glimpse of the master’s head dangling out the window. I can’t explain how it happened, but the moment I spotted him through that narrow crack, his eyes opened. He saw me looking at him, and a moment later he twisted his face into something that resembled a smile. “Get me out of here, Walt,” he said. “My arm’s all busted up, and I can’t move on my own.”

I ran around to the other side of the car again, took off my shirt, and bunched it up in my hands, improvising a pair of makeshift mittens to protect my palms against the burning metal. Then I scrambled to the top, braced myself along the edge of the open door, and reached in to pull the master out. Unfortunately, his right shoulder was the bad one, and he couldn’t extend that arm. He made an effort to turn his body around and give me his other arm, but that took work, real work, and I could see how excruciating the pain was for him. I told him to stay still, removed
the belt from my pants, and then tried again by lowering the leather strap into the car. That seemed to do the trick. Master Yehudi grabbed hold of it with his left hand, and I began to pull. I don’t want to remember how many times he bumped himself, how many times he slipped, but we both fought on, and after twenty or thirty minutes we finally got him out.