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know?”
    He didn’t answer for a minute. He looked behind him, then up at the long lighted arc of the overpass where the big night trucks were rolling, southward to Los Angeles and the Imperial Valley, northward to Fresno, San Francisco, Portland. His eyes glazed with desire. He wished that hewas rolling, headed north for Portland or south or east, anywhere so long as he was wheeling with horsepower under his toe.
    “Can you keep it under your hat?”
    I told him I could.
    He lowered his voice. “I heard the old man talking to the sheriff. He said it was bonded bourbon.”
    “The whole truckload?”
    “Must have been. The load alone was insured for sixty-five gees.”
    “Was Tony bonded?”
    “For a hundred, yep. He’s our bonded driver. I thought at first you was from the bonding company. The first idea they ever get in their little pointed heads is jumping on our necks.”
    “Tony’s in the clear, anyway.”
    “Yeah. But I can’t figure it. He had his orders not to stop for anybody or anything. The old man always says we shouldn’t stop for the Governor himself if he wanted a lift. Anybody tries to cut over on us, we’re supposed to bull on through, smash them if we have to.” He brought his right fist up and smacked the inside of his other hand. “Only way I can see it, Tony forgot his orders and stopped on the highway for somebody. The poor little son of gun.” His left hand clenched his fist in a grip that left fingernail marks.
    “You were fond of Tony.”
    “Call it that. We live—we lived in the same boarding-house. I liked him better than most. I owed him something. The time my brakes went out on the Nojoqui grade, he was my helper. I was driving a tanker full of high-octane stuff. Took the ditch at a hundred. Tony jumped out at the top of the hill and ran the hell down and pulled me out of it. All I lost was my hair.”
    “Who would he stop for?” I said. “I heard he liked women.”
    “Who doesn’t?” He smiled ruefully. “The broads run like a deer when I take off my hat now.”
    I brought him back to the subject: “What about Tony’s women? Drivers have been fingered by a woman before.”
    “You’re telling me.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking hard. “There was a dame, yeah. I don’t hardly like to say it. I don’t know nothing against the dame for sure.”
    “It wouldn’t be a woman called Anne Meyer?”
    “Annie Meyer? Hell, no. She’s Meyer’s daughter. What would she be doing fingering one of her old man’s trucks?”
    “I understood that she was Tony’s love interest.”
    “She was in a way, I guess. He talked about her a lot. Sure, he was stuck on her. But she could never see him. Annie’s got other interests. That was the big sorrow in his life. But it didn’t amount to anything real. Know what I mean? This other dame was different. She made a big play for Tony the last week or so. He told me she was nuts about him. I dunno. It appeared to me he was stepping out of his class, same as he tried to do with Annie Meyer. The dame is a nightclub singer, a real doll. I never see her, but he showed me her picture in the front of the club.”
    “In town here?”
    “Yeah. The Slipper, out at the end of Yanonali Street. He spent a lot of time there the last few days. And the way he talked, he’d stop a truck for her.” It was the highest compliment he could pay.
    “What was her name?”
    “I don’t remember her last name. Tony called her Jo.” He massaged his scalp. “The thing that makes me suspicious, she fell for Tony awful hard and fast, and she must of had a reason.”
    “He was a good-looking boy, if she liked the Latin type.”
    “Yeah. Sure. I’ll tell you, though, dames didn’t go for Tony usually. He frightened them off, kind of—got too intenseabout it, you might say. When he went overboard for some beast, he couldn’t leave her alone. Like with Annie Meyer now.” He paused and looked behind him. The lighted warehouse was empty, except for