21 "NOTHING PROPINKS LIKE PROPINQUITY"

"… and when I get into town I call my friend Ernie Cureo. James knows him. And his wife is having hysterics and Ernie's in the hospital. So I go right along and he tells me the score and I figure that James may need some reinforcements. So I jump on my coal-black mare and gallop through the night and when I get near to Spectreville I see the light in the sky. Mr Spang's having himself a barbecue, I figure. And the gate in the fence is open so I decide to join the feast. Well, believe me or believe me not, there's not a soul in the place except a guy with a busted leg and multiple contusions, who's crawling down the road trying to get away. And he looks to me mighty like a young hood called Frasso from Detroit Ernie Cureo tells me was one of the guys that took James. The fellow's in no state to deny this and I more or less get the picture and I figure that Rhyolite's my next stop. So I tell the kid he'll soon be having plenty of company from the Fire Department and I take him to the gate and leave him there and then after a while there's a girl standing in the middle of the desert looking as if she's been fired out of a cannon and here we all are. And now you tell."
So it's not all part of a dream and I am lying in the back of the Studillac and this is Tiffany's lap under my head and that is Felix and we are going hell for leather down the road to safety, a doctor, a bath, some food and drink and an endless amount of sleep. Bond moved and he felt Tiffany's hand in his hair to tell it was all real and just like he hoped, and he lay still again and said nothing and held each moment to him and listened to their voices and the zip of the tyres on the road.
At the end of Tiffany's story, Felix Leiter gave a reverent whistle. "Jeese, Mam," he said. "The two of you sure seem to have busted a hole in the Spangled Mob. What in hell's going to happen now? There are plenty of other hornets in the nest and just sittin' around buzzin' isn't goin' to be their way. They'll want some action."
"Check," said Tiffany. "Spang was a member of the Syndicate at Vegas and these guys stick pretty much together. Then there's Shady Tree and those two torpedoes, Wint and Kidd, whoever they may be. The sooner we cross the State-line the better. Then what?"
"We're doin' all right so far," said Felix Leiter. "Be at Beatty in ten minutes, then we'll get on to 58 and be over the line in half an hour. Then there's a long ride through Death Valley and over the mountains down to Olancha where we hit No6. We could stop there and get James to a doc and do some eating and cleaning up. Then just stay on 6 until we get to LA. It'll be a hell of a drive, but we should make LA by lunchtime. Then we can relax a bit and think again. My guess is that we oughta get you and James out of the country pretty quick. The boys'll try and fix all kinds of phoney raps on you both, and once you're located I wouldn't give a nickel for either of you. Best chance would be to get you both on a plane to New York tonight and off to England tomorrow. James can take it from there."
"I guess that makes sense," said the girl. "But who is this Bond guy, anyway? What's his racket? Is he an eye?"
"You better ask him yourself, Mam," Bond heard Leiter say carefully. "But I wouldn't let that worry you over much. He'll take care of you."
Bond smiled to himself and in the long silence that followed he dropped off into an uneasy sleep which lasted until they were half way across California and had pulled up outside a white wicket gate that said 'Otis Fairplay, MD'.
And then, a mass of surgical tape and streaked with mercuro-chrome, washed and shaved and with a huge breakfast inside him, he was back in the car and back in the world and Tiffany Case had withdrawn into her old ironical and uncompromising manner and Bond was making himself useful by watching for speed cops as Leiter kept the car in the eighties down the endless dazzling road towards the distant cloudline that hid the High Sierras.
Then they were rolling easily along Sunset Boulevard between the palm trees and the emerald lawns, the dust-streaked Studillac looking incongruous among the glistening Corvettes and Jaguars, and finally, towards evening, they were sitting in the dark, cool bar of the Beverley Hills Hotel, and there were new suitcases in the lobby and brand new Hollywood clothes and even Bond's battle-scarred face didn't mean they hadn't all just finished work at the studios.
There was a telephone on the table beside their Martinis. Felix Leiter finished talking to New York for the fourth time since their arrival.
"Well that's fixed," he said, putting back the receiver. "My pals at the office have got you on the Elizabeth. Been delayed by a strike at the docks. Sails tomorrow night at eight. They'll meet you in the morning at La Guardia with the tickets and you'll go on board any time in the afternoon. They picked up the rest of your things at the Astor, James. One small case and your famous golf clubs. And Washington's obliged with a passport for Tiffany. There'll be a man from the State Department at the airport. You'll both have some forms to sign. Got one of my old pals at the CIA to work it. The middays have made a big splash with the story-'Ghost Town goes West' and so on-but they don't seem to have found our friend Spang yet and your names don't figure. My boys say there's no call out for you with the cops, but one of our undercover men says the gangs are looking for you and your description's been circulated. Ten Grand attached. So it's as well you're skipping quick. Better go aboard separately. Cover up as much as you can and go down to your cabins and stay there. All hell's going to bust loose when they get to the bottom of that old mine. That'll make leastwise three corpses to nothing and they don't like that kind of score."
"Pinkertons seem to have quite a machine," said Bond with admiration. "But I'll be glad when we're both out of here. I used to think your gangsters were just a bunch of Italian grease-balls who filled themselves up with pizza pie and beer all the week and on Saturdays knocked off a garage or a drug store so as to pay their way at the races. But they've certainly got plenty of violence on the payroll."
Tiffany Case laughed derisively. "You ought to get your head examined," she said flatly. "If we make the Lizzie all in one piece, it'll be a miracle. That's how good they are. Thanks to Captain Hook here we've got a chance, but it's not more than that. Greaseballs!"
Felix Leiter chuckled. "Come on, lovebirds," he said, looking at his watch. "We ought to get going. I've got to get back to Vegas tonight and start looking for the skeleton of our old dumb friend Shy Smile. And you've got your plane to catch. You can go on fighting at twenty thousand feet. Get a better perspective from there. May even decide to make up and be friends. You know how they say." He beckoned to the waiter. "Nothing pro-pinks like propinquity."
Leiter drove them out to the airport and dropped them there. Bond felt a lump in his throat when the lanky figure limped off to his car after being warmly embraced by Tiffany Case.
"You got yourself a good pal there," said the girl as they watched Leiter slam the door and heard the deep boom of the exhaust as he accelerated away on his long drive back into the desert.
"Yes," said Bond. "Felix is all right."
There was the glint of moonlight on the steel hook as Leiter waved a last goodbye and then there was the dust settling on the road and the iron voice of the loudspeakers saying "Trans-World Airlines, Flight 93, now loading at Gate No5 for Chicago and New York. All aboard, please," and they pushed their way through the glass doors and took the first steps of their long journey half way across the world to London.
The new Super-G Constellation roared over the darkened continent and Bond lay in his comfortable bunk waiting for sleep to carry away his aching body and thinking of Tiffany, asleep in the bunk below, and of where he stood with his assignment.
He thought of the lovely face cradled on the open hand below him, innocent and defenceless in sleep, the scorn gone from the level grey eyes and the ironical droop from the corners of the passionate mouth, and Bond knew that he was very near to being x in love with her. And what about her? How strong was this masculine protest that had been born on that night in San Francisco when the men had broken into her room and taken her? Would the child and the woman ever come out from behind the barricade she had started to build that night against all the men in the world? Would she ever come out of the shell that had hardened with each year of solitude and withdrawal?
Bond remembered moments in the last twenty-four hours when he had known the answer, moments when a warm passionate girl had looked out happily from behind the mask of the toughie from the gangs, the smuggler, the shill, the blackjack dealer, and had said : 'Take me by the hand. Open the door and we will walk away together into the sunshine. Don't worry. I will keep step with you. I have always been in step with the thought of you, but you didn't come, and I have spent my life listening to a different drummer.'
Yes, he thought. It will be all right. That side of it. But was he prepared for the consequences? Once he had taken her by the hand it would be for ever. He would be in the role of the healer, the analyst, to whom the patient had transferred her love and trust on her way out of the illness. There would be no cruelty equal to dropping her hand once he had taken it in his. Was he ready for all that that meant in his life and his career?
Bond stirred in his bunk and put the problem away. It was too early for that. He was going too fast. Wait and see. One thing at a time. And he obstinately shelved the issue and shifted his thoughts to M and to the job which still had to be finished before he could spend time worrying about his private life.
Well, part of the snake had been smashed. Was it the head or the tail? Difficult to say, but Bond was inclined to think that Jack Spang and the mysterious ABC were the real operators of the smuggling racket and that Seraffimo had only handled the receiving end. Seraffimo could be replaced. Tiffany could be discarded. Shady Tree, whom she could implicate in the diamond smuggling, would have to be got under cover until the storm, if Bond was indeed a storm signal, had blown over. But there was nothing to implicate Jack Spang or the House of Diamonds and the only clue to ABC was the London telephone number which Bond reminded himself to extract from the girl as soon as possible. That, and the machinery of contacts connected with it, would be changed directly the full facts of Tiffany's defection and Bond's escape had been communicated to London, presumably by Shady Tree. So all this, reflected Bond, made Jack Spang his next target and through him, ABC. Then there only remained the beginning of the pipeline in Africa, and that could only be reached through ABC. Bond's immediate concern, he concluded before letting sleep take him, was to report the whole situation to M as soon as possible after boarding the Queen Elizabeth, and let London take over. Vallance's men would get working. There wouldn't be much for Bond to do even when he got back. A lot of reports to write. The same old routine at the office. And in the evenings there would be Tiffany in the spare room of his flat off the Kings Road. He would have to send a cable to May to get things fixed. Let's see-flowers, bath essence from Floris, air the sheets…
Just ten hours after leaving Los Angeles they roared over La Guardia and turned out at sea for the long run in.
It was eight o'clock on Sunday morning and there were few people about at the airport, but an official stopped them as they were walking in off the tarmac and led them to a side entrance where there were two young men waiting, one from Pinkertons and one from the State Department. While they chatted about the flights, their luggage was brought round and they were taken to a side door and out to where a smart maroon Pontiac was waiting, its engine purring and the blinds in the rear pulled down.
And then there were some empty hours in the apartment belonging to the Pinkerton man until, at around four in the afternoon, but with a quarter of an hour between them, they were climbing up the covered gangway into the great safe, black British belly of the Queen Elizabeth and were at last in their cabins on M deck with their doors locked against the world.
But, as first Tiffany Case and then James Bond went into the mouth of the gangway, a dockhand from Anastasia's Longshoreman's union had walked swiftly to a phone booth in the customs shed.
And three hours later two American businessmen were dropped at the dockside by a black sedan and were just in time to get through Immigration and customs and up the gangway before the loudspeakers began calling for all visitors to leave the ship please.
And one of the businessmen was youngish, with a pretty face and a glimpse of prematurely white hair under the Stetson with the waterproof cover, and the name on the brief-case he was carrying was B. Kitteridge.
And the other was a big, fattish man with a nervous glare in the small eyes behind the bifocals, and he was sweating profusely and constantly wiping his face round with a big handkerchief.
And the name on the label of his grip was W. Winter, and below the name, in red ink, was written: MY BLOOD GROUP is F.