‘Okay. Let’s go.’ The man didn’t offer to carry Bond’s suitcase for him. Bond followed him over to a smart-looking Chevrolet with a lucky raccoon tail tied to its chrome naked-lady mascot. He threw his suitcase into the back and climbed in after it.
The car moved off and out of the airport on to the parkway. It crossed into the far lane and turned left. Other cars hissed by. Bond’s driver kept to the inside lane, driving slowly. Bond felt himself being examined in the driving mirror. He looked up at the driver’s identification tag. It said, ‘ERNEST CUREO. No. 2584’. And there was a photograph whose eyes also looked levelly at Bond.
The cab smelled of old cigar smoke and Bond pressed down the switch of the power-operated window. A furnace-blast of air made him close it again.
The driver half turned in his seat. ‘Don’t want to do that, Mister Bond,’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘Cab’s conditioned. May not seem so, but it’s better’n outside.’
‘Thanks,’ said Bond, and then: ‘I believe you’re a friend of Felix Leiter.’
‘Sure,’ said the driver, over his shoulder. ‘Nice guy. Told me to watch out for ya. Be glad if I can do anything while ya’re here. Staying long?’
‘I can’t say,’ said Bond. ‘Few days anyway.’
‘Tell ya what,’ said the driver. ‘Don’t think I’m trying to gyp ya, but if we’re going to do some work together and ya got some dough, mebbe ya better hire the cab by the day. Fifty bucks, but I got to make a living. It’ll make sense to the front boys at the hotels and so on. Don’t see otherwise how I’m to keep close. Like that they’ll understand me hanging about waiting for ya half the day. They’re a suspicious lot of bastards on the Strip.’
‘Couldn’t be better.’ Bond had at once liked and trusted the man. ‘It’s a deal.’
‘Okay.’ The driver expanded a little. ‘Ya see, Mister Bond. The folks round here don’t like anything out of the ord’nary. What I say. They’re suspicious. I mean. Ya look like anything ’cept a tourist who’s come to lose his wad and they get a bad case of nose trouble. Take yaself. Anyone can see ya’re a Limey even before ya start talking. Clothes and so forth. Well, what’s a Limey doing here? And what sort of a Limey is this? He looks kind of a tough guy. So let’s just take a good look at him.’ He half turned. ‘Did ya see a feller hangin’ around the terminal with a leather shaving kit under his arm?’
Bond remembered the man who had watched him at the Oxygen Bar. ‘Yes, I did,’ he said, and it was then he realized that the oxygen had made him careless.
‘Bet ya life he’s looking at ya pictures right now,’ said the driver. ‘Sixteen-millimetre camera in that shaving kit. Just pull down the zip and press y’arm against it and off it goes. He’ll have taken fifty feet. Straight and profile. And that’ll be with “Mug Identification” at Headquarters this afternoon, with a list of what ya got in ya bag. Ya don’t look as if ya’re carryin’ a gun. Mebbe it’s a flat holster job. But if ya’re, there’ll be another man with a gun alongside all the time ya’re in the rooms. Word’ll be sent down the line by this evening. Better watch out for any fellow with a coat on. Nobody wears ’em here save to house the artillery.’
‘Well, thanks,’ said Bond, annoyed with himself. ‘I can see I’ll have to keep a bit wider awake. Pretty good machine they seem to have here.’
The driver grunted affirmatively and drove on in silence.
They were just entering the famous ‘Strip’. The desert on both sides of the road, which had been empty except for occasional hoardings advertising the hotels, was beginning to sprout gas stations and motels. They passed a motel with a swimming pool which had built-up transparent glass sides. As they drove by, a girl dived into the bright green water and her body sliced through the tank in a cloud of bubbles. Then came a gas station with an elegant drive-in restaurant. GASETERIA, it said. FRESH-UP HERE! HOT DOGS! JUMBOBURGERS!! ATOMBURGERS!! ICE COOL DRINKS!!! DRIVE IN, and there were two or three cars being served by waitresses in high-heeled shoes and two-piece bathing suits.
The great six-lane highway stretched on through a forest of multi-coloured signs and frontages until it lost itself downtown in a dancing lake of heat waves. The day was as hot and sultry as a fire opal. The swollen sun burned straight down the middle of the frying concrete and there was no shade anywhere except under the few scattered palms in the forecourts of the motels. A glittering gunfire of light-splinters shot at Bond’s eyes from the windscreens of oncoming cars and from their blaze of chrome styling, and he felt his wet shirt clinging to his skin.
‘Coming into the Strip now,’ said the driver. ‘Otherwise known as the “Rue de la Pay”. Spelt p.a.y. Joke. See?’
‘Got it,’ said Bond.
