I drove fast up Beach Road into Hawthorne Avenue and I turned left into Foothill Boulevard.
The sun was strong, and I lowered the blue sunshield over the windshield. The sunlight, coming through the blue glass, filled the car with a soft, easy light and made me feel as if I was in an aquarium.
The Acme Garage stood at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Hollywood Avenue, facing the desert. It wasn’t anything to get excited about, and I wondered why Lute Ferris had selected such an isolated, out-of-the-way spot for a filling station.
There were six pumps, two air- and water-towers in a row before a large steel and corrugated shed that acted as a repair shop. To the right was a dilapidated rest-room and snack bar, and behind the shed, almost out of sight, was a squat, ugly looking bungalow with a flat roof.
At one time the station might have looked smart. You could still see signs of a blue-and-white check pattern on the build-ings, but the salt air, the sand from the desert, the winds and the rain had caught up with the smartness, and no one had bothered to take on an unequal battle.
Before one of the gas pumps was a low-slung Bentley coupé; black and glittering in the sunshine. At the far end of the ramp leading to the repair shop was a four-ton truck.
There seemed no one about, and I drove slowly up to one of the pumps and stopped; my bumpers about a couple of yard from the Bentley’s rear.
I tapped on the horn and waited; using my eyes, seeing nothing to excite my interest.
After a while a boy in a blue, greasy overall came out of the repair shop as if he had the whole day still on his hands, and wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it now he had it. He lounged past the Bentley, and raised eyebrows at me without any show of interest.
At a guess he was about sixteen, but old in sin and cunning. His oil-smudged face was thin and hard, and his small green eyes were shifty.