THE plane made a big curve out over the sparkling blue Pacific and then swept round across Hollywood and gained height so as to make the Cajon Pass through the great golden cliff of the High Sierras.
Bond caught a glimpse of endless miles of palm-lined avenues, of sprinklers whirling over emerald lawns in front of gracious homes, of sprawling aircraft factories, of the outside lots of film studios with their jumble of gimcrack sets-city streets, Western ranches, what looked like a miniature motor-racing track, a full-size four-masted schooner planted in the ground-and then they were in the mountains and through them and over the interminable red desert that is the backstage of Los Angeles.
They flew over Barstow, the junction from which the single track of the Santa Fe strides off into the desert on its long run across the Colorado Plateau, skirting on their right the Calico Mountains, once the borax centre of the world, and leaving far away to the left the bone-strewn wastes of Death Valley. Then came more mountains, streaked with red like gums bleeding over rotten teeth, and then a glimpse of green in the midst of the blasted, Martian landscape, and then a slow- descent and 'please fasten your seat belts and extinguish your cigarettes'.
The heat hit Bond's face like a fist, and he had begun to sweat in the fifty yards between his cool plane and the blessed relief of the air-conditioned terminal building. The glass doors, operated by seeing-eye photo-electric cells, hissed open as he approached and slowly closed behind him, and already the slot-machines, four banks of them, were right in his path. It was natural to bring out the small change and jerk the handles and watch the lemons and the oranges and the cherries and the bell-fruits whirl round to their final click-pause-ting, followed by a soft mechanical sigh. Five cents, ten cents, a quarter. Bond gave them all a try, and only once two cherries and a bell fruit coughed back three coins for the one he had played.
As he moved away, waiting for the baggage of the half-dozen passengers to appear on the ramp near the exit, his eyes caught a notice over a big machine that might have been for iced water. It said: OXYGEN BAR. He strolled over to it and read the rest: BREATHE PURE OXYGEN, it Said. HEALTHFUL AND HARMLESS. FOR A QUICK LIFT. EASES DISTRESS OF OVER-INDULGENCE, DROWSINESS, FATIGUE, NERVOUSNESS AND MANY OTHER SYMPTOMS.
Bond obediently put a quarter into the slot and bent over so that his nose and mouth were enclosed in a wide black rubber mouthpiece. He pressed a button and, as instructed, breathed in and out slowly for a full minute. It was just like breathing very cold air-no taste, no smell. At the end of the minute there was a click from the machine and Bond straightened himself. He felt nothing but a slight dizziness, but later he recognized that there had been carelessness in the ironical grin he gave to a man with a leather shaving kit under his arm who had been standing watching him.
The man smiled briefly back and turned away.
The loudspeaker asked passengers to collect their luggage and Bond picked up his case and pushed through the swing doors of the exit into the red-hot arms of noon.
"You for the Tiara?" said a voice. A chunky man with large, very direct brown eyes under a chauffeur's peaked cap shot the question at him from a wide mouth from which a wooden toothpick jutted.
"Yes."
"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. No2584'.
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 ordinary. 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-............