The valley towns. Salinas, Fresno, Stockton, Livermore. He would have to comb them, one after another.
It might take weeks.
No, he could not allow it to take weeks. A week at the most. So if he seriously intended to track down a warehouse of Mithrias portables, he would have to find a direct route to them.
Goddamn, he thought. When he had worked for C.B.B. he had been on company time, free to prowl and poke at leisure. Sometimes he and his boss Ed von Scharf spent a month, off and on, digging up a buy and hazarding a variety of tenuous half-joking offers, until finally, almost out of sheer boredom, the owner let it fall their way.
Image of his boss, black mustache and all, seated among pasteboard cartons, eating a Popsicle and scratching out an inventory. A professional with two decades of buying experience, back to the days of army surplus - the genuine army surplus - and then wholesale groceries, and after that home freezers and half-cows on the installment plan, and then whole sale direct to you at no mark-up, and, at last, in with the Pareti brothers and their discount house that operated out in the open.
Returning to his Merc he consulted a map. He could take US 40 or 50 direct from the East Bay and be in Reno in four hours. The length of a long baseball game.
The time at this moment - he checked - was one-thirty. He could be in Reno before sunup. Better yet, sleep a couple of hours in the car and then start, so that he would have daylight when he reached me Sierras. Then when he got to Reno, go to a friend’s house to bathe and shave and change his shirt, perhaps bum breakfast, and then drop by C.B.B. and talk to Ed von Scharf.
Starting up the Merc he drove off in the direction of the Oakland Bay Bridge.
THE HIGHWAY through the Sacramento Valley was as wide and flat as anyone could want. He made good time, rushing along between the fields and at last over a narrow bridge built not over water but over miles of reeds. The metal railing of the bridge mumped noisily, and the sound and the nearness of it made him tense. He had done this part in darkness, but now, as he entered Sacramento, the sky to the East started to turn white. If he meant to get across before the big trailers and trucks and interstate rigs blocked everyone’s way, he would have to hurry.
But in downtown Sacramento he became lost, even though the streets were empty. Signs reading “truck route” pointed off in various directions. Finally he found himself driving up and down bumpy tree-shaded streets of shacks and corrugated iron machine shops and sheds. Could this be the highway out of Sacramento? He blundered across a wide intersection of train tracks and rutted dirt and a number of alley-like roads, onto a two-lane highway with closed-up diners and fruit stands and gas stations on each side of it. Making a left turn he followed the highway. It wound around a hill, rising, and on the shoulder he saw four trucks with their lights on, their diesel engines rattling away as they warmed up. The trucks were about to get back on the road. The drivers had been asleep all night but now they were awake and on the job. He put on more speed, flying around the curves.
The road rose continually. It remained narrow, but well-kept. The fruit stands fell away and he saw wooded countryside. Meanwhile, the sky became brighter. It shone a brisk white, and once, as he reached the top of a rise, he saw what seemed to be mountains.
Later on he entered a town built on a hillside, on stilts, made entirely out of lumber; he saw no stone or metal, just the reddish wood dark in the early-morning gloom. Nothing stirred. But just past the town he came across more trucks shuddering away and wanting to get back on the road. Only a question of time before he encountered a band of them already in motion. And after that he would make no time at all; he would follow them up the grades and across the top and down the other side, the entire distance to Reno.
Now the road climbed wildly. The woods became forests of pine, lumber country. It was hard to believe that this narrow road was the main highway, US 40; what had happened to the broad four-lane flat pavement between Vallejo and Sacramento? This was like some alternate route, a county or state route used by skiers and fishermen, not by the interstate carriers. Few signs marked it. The ground on each side had been piled up so that the road seemed to cut constantly through masses of reddish dirt, throwing the dirt up car-high. Every now and then he saw construction equipment pulled off and covered by canvas.
Ahead of him the back end of a truck appeared around a curve; he slowed and men shifted down and gunned past it. The first one of them, he thought to himself. And he had not reached the summit.
The Sierras around him - he had to take the word of the Standard Stations roadmap that these were the Sierras - looked like a local recreation area, marred by trail-like side roads, stacks of logs, the twin ruts left by tractors and bulldozers. Every now and men a heap of rubbish, mostly picnic plates and beer cans, reminded him of me swarm of tourist cabins just out of sight beyond the pines. Every tiny dirt road led to them. And, as he reached me summit, he realized that he would be seeing one or more lakes.
The center of me Sierras, he thought. How demoralizing it was. Ahead of him me road rose only slightly; in fact, for me first time he could not tell if he were still climbing. Possibly it was a long, nearly level grade. A sloping field tumbled away to the right side, and he saw that a couple of cars had pulled off. The summit, he decided. Suddenly he discovered that he was stiff and cold and that he needed to go to the bathroom. So he coasted the car from the road, onto the wide dirt shoulder, shut off the motor, and parked.
The mountains were quiet. No wind. No voices. And, for him, the sense of expanse. Opening the car door he stepped unsteadily out. What time was it? Seven-thirty a.m. Here he was, up here by himself. And what a desolate place. A car shot by him along the road, its tires making a furious racket. Cramped throughout his muscles, he lurched about, his hands in his pockets, feeling lousy.
This is no place for me, he decided. A sort of everyone’s vacant lot with trees. He did not feel especially high up. But the air was cold, thin, and bad-smelling. It did not smell of pine needles or earth; it smelled bitter and it made his nose ache. Under his shoes the lumps of dried ground made him stumble. He stepped down the side of a pile of dirt, to a confined spot among shrubs, wee-weed, and then trudged jerkily back up to his car.
I suppose the motor won’t start, he thought to himself as he slammed the door. Up this high the automatic choke always misfunctions. Imagine having to stay here a whole week … but the motor started.
Waiting until a car had hurtled by, he regained the road and in a moment or so had passed on by the top of the next hill. All at once the sun, which had been hidden by the hills and trees, appeared and stabbed him in the eyes; the shattering pale light startled him and confused him and he involuntarily braked his car. From behind him a small pick-up truck shot by and around.
I forgot. Hitting the top at dawn means I have to drive into it the rest of the trip. He had never seen the early-morning sun so spread-out, so large.
Presently he did get a look at the lake; at a couple of them, in fact. They were set off to one side of the road a distance below him, flat, cheerily blue, embedded on what appeared to be a plateau. The trees grew thicker near the lake. He continually glanced out of the window at the lakes, but then a sheer drop in the road, like the side of a ball, made him turn around to keep his mind on his driving. Now that he had passed the peak he found himself descending much more suddenly than he had gone up; the grade dropped him so frighteningly that for a time he did not notice that he had crossed the state line and entered Nevada.
The hills became lesser, unimportant. Once he passed between masses of rock, a dry, barren area. This really is Nevada, he thought. No more vegetation. The water has stopped. Soon he would be out on the desert. And sure enough, he soon was.
What a disappointment. As it had been before when he had driven it. Not like mountains at all … more like a wooded obstacle to commerce that eventually - to everyone’s satisfaction - would be leveled and carted off in trucks in the form of dirt and lumber.
T
HAT AFTERNOON, in Reno, he and Ed von Scharf sat upstairs together in the familiar office overlooking the noisy, bazaar-like main floor of the Consumers’ Buying Bureau. His former boss made it known that he was taking his coffee break, so no one tried to interrupt them. To start it off, Bruce told him about his marriage; he showed him a snapshot of Susan that had been taken in Reno the day of their marriage.
“Is she older than you?” von Scharf asked.
“Yes,” he said. “She’s thirty.”
“Are you pretty sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Positive,” he said. He described the R & J Mimeographing Service. He put in every detail. His former boss listened with deep attention.
“Is sidewalk traffic fairly heavy?”
“Yes,” he said. “We get a lot of people who work in office buildings, between eleven and one.”
His former boss said, “I don’t think you’re using your head. What do you actually have? A good location and a small amount to invest, and you have some sort of an outlet with the minimal fixtures and front. Why are you thinking in terms of typewriters?”
“Because it’s a typewriter place.”
“No it isn’t. What did you learn here? To buy whatever was to be had at a good price that we thought we could sell. You should be out searching for anything that you can get cheap that you think you can move, typewriters or vegetables; it doesn’t matter what. But by insisting on a certain item you destroy your position. You enter a seller’s market. The first you know, you’ll start bidding against someone for these Jap machines. Look, you know nothing about typewriters. Second, you have no real reason to suppose you can get yourself a buy. I’ll tell you what’s hot right now. Gasoline. There’s a terrible gas war out on the Coast. Retail gas, the regular, got down to 19C a gallon on the Coast this last month. The wholesalers are overstocked out there.”
“We can’t sell gas,” he said. He asked him if he had ever seen the Mithrias machines.
“No,” von Scharf said. “I never even heard of them. As far as I know, none of them have gotten out here.”
“Then we’d have a clear field.”
“How many could you buy for twenty-five hundred dollars? Suppose you have to pay one hundred dollars apiece? That’s only twenty-five of the buggers. That’s nonsense.”
Up to now he hadn’t calculated that. It made him feel cold.
“Not enough to bother with,” his former boss said. “You just don’t have enough capital.”
“I might be able to pick up a bunch of Mithrias cheaper than one hundred apiece,” he said doggedly.
“Maybe so. Well, what did you come here to find out from me?”
“I came because I thought maybe you’d know where I could pick up some of them.”
“I don’t,” his former boss said. “I’ve never even seen an ad or an inventory list. I can ask around for you, if you want.”
“Thanks,” Bruce said.
His former boss phoned several people, including one of the Pareti brothers who had been out on the East Coast for a time. None of them knew anything about the Mithrias, but one of them believed that he had heard the name before. He thought he had read about it in a magazine article having to do with England.
“That’s something else,” Bruce said. “A tomb they dug up. An old tomb.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” von Scharf said.
“My own fault,” he said. After all, he could have phoned from the Coast and saved himself the trip.
Von Scharf said, “You’d be better off putting your money into children’s toy typewriters.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. You can get a buy on them right now. Sell them at Christmas.”
“What I think I’ll do,” Bruce said, “is try to locate the man who originally told me about them. Milt Lumky.”
“Oh him,” von Scharf said, smiling. “Yes, he represents some paper manufacturer up in the Northwest. Little guy with a deep voice.”
“I didn’t know you knew him.”
“We got some paper through him, once. A hard man to deal with, but scrupulous. He told you about these Jap machines? Well, he’s smart. Maybe he owns a warehouse of them and wants to get rid of them.”
Bruce explained that Lumky was somewhere on his rounds, between Seattle and Montpelier.
“You can get hold of him,” von Scharf said. “You could call his company and ask what his schedule is. Or you could call them and tell them to have him get in touch with you the next time he calls in. Or you could get in touch with some big paper-buyer along his route and ask them to have him call you.”
He pondered. “I guess his company would know.”
He called the Whalen Paper Company on C.B.B.’s phone and told them that he wanted to get hold of Milton Lumky, their sales representative for the Pacific Northwest. After some delay they informed him that Mr. Lumky was on the road between Pocatello and Boise, but that on the 9th of the month he would definitely be in Pocatello. He had an appointment to meet with the owner of a dairy who wanted to order pasteboard milk cartons of a new style. The Whalen people gave him the address of the dairy and the exact time of the appointment. He thanked them and hung up.
“This is the 7th,” his former boss said, showing him a calendar.
“I think I’ll drive up to Pocatello,” he decided.
His former boss said, “If you want to stay here in Reno tonight you can have dinner with my wife and myself and as far as I’m concerned you can sleep on the couch in the living room.”
“Thanks,” he said, “but I want to get started.”
“Would you resent it if I gave you some advice?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Be sure you don’t put everything you have on the block. Try to make sure that if everything falls apart you’ll still come out with something. Don’t wind up empty-handed.”
He said, “She’s putting up much more than I am.”
His former boss excused himself and went downstairs to the main floor. He returned presently carrying a wrapped package, sealed with the firm’s special clip that always got fixed on during a purchase. “So you won’t leave here feeling bad,” he said.
“I don’t feel bad,” he answered. But he opened the package. It turned out to be a quart of imported discount Scotch that his former boss had gone down and bought for him at the liquor department. Thanks,” he said.
“You always talk about liking Scotch.” His former boss shook hands with him, clapped him on the back, and sent him out of the building and onto the sidewalk.
As he got into his car he thought, Now I have a six hundred mile drive to make. But this was one road that he knew perfectly. He stopped at a grocery store and bought some food to carry along with him, and then he set off along highway 40, going East toward the junction with 95. Off to try to find Milton Lumky, he thought. Who is somewhere in Idaho selling paper wholesale in one town or another, driving his Mercedes-Benz and wearing his lemon-colored short-sleeve sports shirt and gray slacks, listening to his car radio and smoking a White Owl cigar.
10
THE ROAD brought him closer and closer to Boise, and he began to want to stop there. He yearned to stay overnight with Susan and Taffy in the house. But near Winnemucca he had had a flat tire, and that had held him up for several hours. He could not afford to cut it too close; he needed to get into Pocatello with plenty of time to spare.
Anyhow his delay altered his schedule and brought him into Boise at three o’clock in the morning. Of course he had a key to the house, but if he stopped at all he would want to stay most of the next day. There would be problems that had come up that Susan needed help with; once that got started he might never leave.
I might simply stay, he thought.
So he drove on through dark, closed-up Boise and out the far side, on Highway 30, the long straight stretch before the obnoxious twists and descents began. Little traffic moved with him. He had the road to himself.
At dawn he pulled off on
to the shoulder, went wretchedly around and crawled into the back of the car, and slept. Just before noon the hot sun woke him up. He returned to the front and drove along the road until he saw a roadside diner. There he ate and rested. The owner permitted him to use the diner’s washroom; he shaved, washed the upper part of his body, changed his clothes, squirted on new deodorant, and returned to the car feeling improved.
As he drove, it occurred to him that now he had entered Milton Lumky territory. At any moment he might spy the gray Mercedes. Suppose it was going in the opposite direction? Should he make a U-turn and go after it? Probably it would be going toward Pocatello, so he had only to catch up with it and go on by; his Merc had a higher top speed and that would not be hard to do. But, he thought, suppose it is not Milton Lumky and his Mercedes; suppose it is an entirely different Mercedes with someone else, a total stranger, inside. Suppose I chase it for miles, farther and farther away from Pocatello … but how many gray Mercedes would there be driving around this part of Idaho at this particular time? Still, it would only take one. One in addition to Milt’s.
Or, he thought, I might run into him at a roadside cafe or at a gas station. At a motel. At a drugstore in some small town, both of us buying suntan oil or cigarettes or beer. I might stop at a red light and see him walking along the street of some small town. I might see him off on the shoulder napping in the rear of the Mercedes. In Pocatello, when I get there, I might see him crossing in a crosswalk, or roaming along with his satchel. Anywhere, at any moment. Now that I am in Milton Lumky territory.
He reached Pocatello that evening, just at sunset. The appointment that Milt had with the dairy did not take place until the following morning, at ten-thirty. So he had arrived with time to spare. He turned off at a motel called the Grand View Motel, rented a room, parked his car, and carried his suitcase indoors and set it down on the bed.