"Forty miles.
Seems longer this weather.
Where from, stranger?"
"Santa Rosa."
"Come the long way, eh?
Tahoe and Lone Pine?"
"Not Tahoe.
Reno and Carson City."
"Still the long way." A fleeting smile curved his lips.
"Any law against it?" I asked him.
"Huh?
No, sure not.
Guess you think we're nosey. Just on account of that heist back there.
Take a jack and get his flats, Art."
"I'm busy," the gaunt man growled. "I've got work to do.
I got this spray job.
And it's raining, you might have noticed."
The man in brown said pleasantly:
"Too damp for a good spray job, Art.
Get moving."
I said: "They're front and rear, on the right side.
You could use the spare for one spot, if you're busy."
"Take two jacks, Art," the brown man said.
"Now, listen — " Art began to bluster.
The brown man moved his eyes, looked at Art with a soft quiet-eyed stare, lowered them again almost shyly.
He didn't speak.
Art rocked as if a gust of wind had hit him. He stamped over to the corner and put a rubber coat over his coveralls, a sou'wester on his head.
He grabbed a socket wrench and a hand jack and wheeled a dolly jack over to the doors.
He went out silently, leaving the door yawning.
The rain blustered in.
The man in brown strolled over and shut it and strolled back to the workbench and put his hips exactly where they had been before. I could have taken him then.
We were alone.
He didn't know who I was.
He looked at me lightly and threw his cigarette on the cement floor and stamped on it without looking down.
"I bet you could use a drink," he said. "Wet the inside and even up."
He reached a bottle from the workbench behind him and set it on the edge and set two glasses beside it.
He poured a stiff jolt into each and held one out.
Walking like a dummy I went over and took it.
The memory of the rain was still cold on my face.
The smell of hot paint drugged the close air of the garage.
"That Art," the brown man said. "He's like all mechanics.
Always got his face in a job he ought to have done last week.
Business trip?"
I sniffed my drink delicately.
It had the right smell.
I watched him drink some of his before I swallowed mine. I rolled it around on my tongue.
There was no cyanide in it.
I emptied the little glass and put it down beside him and moved away.
"Partly," I said. I walked over to the half-painted sedan with the big metal paint gun lying along its fender.
The rain hit the flat roof hard.