She bent over to count them under the dim light of the dash.
A bag clicked open, clicked shut.
She let a spent breath die on her lips. She leaned towards me.
"I'm leaving, copper.
I'm on my way.
This is a getaway stake and God how I need it.
What happened to Harry?"
"I told you he ran away.
Canino got wise to him somehow.
Forget Harry.
I've paid and I want my information."
"You'll get it.
Joe and I were out riding Foothill Boulevard Sunday before last.
It was late and the lights coming up and the usual mess of cars.
We passed a brown coupe and I saw the girl who was driving it.
There was a man beside her, a dark short man.
The girl was a blonde.
I'd seen her before.
She was Eddie Mars' wife. The guy was Canino.
You wouldn't forget either of them, if you ever saw them.
Joe tailed the coupe from in front.
He was good at that.
Canino, the watchdog, was taking her out for air.
A mile or so east of Realito a road turns towards the foothills.
That's orange country to the south but to the north it's as bare as hell's back yard and smack up against the hills there's a cyanide plant where they make the stuff for fumigation.
Just off the highway there's a small garage and paintshop run by a gee named Art Huck.
Hot car drop, likely.
There's a frame house beyond this, and beyond the house nothing but the foothills and the bare stone outcrop and the cyanide plant a couple of miles on.
That's the place where she's holed up.
They turned off on this road and Joe swung around and went back and we saw the car turn off the road where the frame house was.
We sat there half an hour looking through the cars going by.
Nobody came back out.
When it was quite dark Joe sneaked up there and took a look.
He said there were lights in the house and a radio was going and just the one car out in front, the coupe.
So we beat it."
She stopped talking and I listened to the swish of tires on Wilshire.
I said: "They might have shifted quarters since then but that's what you have to sell — that's what you have to sell.
Sure you knew her?"
"If you ever see her, you won't make a mistake the second time.
Good-by, copper, and wish me luck.
I got a raw deal."
"Like hell you did," I said, and walked away across the street to my own car.
The gray Plymouth moved forward, gathered speed, and darted around the corner on to Sunset Place.
The sound of its motor died, and with it blonde Agnes wiped herself off the slate for good, so far as I was concerned.
Three men dead, Geiger, Brody and Harry Jones, and the woman went riding off in the rain with my two hundred in her bag and not a mark on her.
I kicked my starter and drove on downtown to eat.
I ate a good dinner.
Forty miles in the rain is a hike, and I hoped to make it a round trip.
I drove north across the river, on into Pasadena, through Pasadena and almost at once I was in orange groves.
The tumbling rain was solid white spray in the headlights.