CHAPTER 1SOFT PEDAL FOR SAGERS It is hot! I ain't never been in Hell, but I'm tellin' you that I reckon it ain't any hotter than this Californian desert in July.I am drivin' along past Indio an' I reckon that soon I am goin' to see the Palm Springs lights. An' I am goin' some — the speedometer says eighty. If it wasn't so hot it would be a swell night; but there ain't any air, an' there was a baby sand storm this afternoon that caught me asleep an' I gotta lump of the Mojave Desert or whatever they call it stuck right at the back of my throat.Say, did you ever hear of Cactus Lizzie? Well, there is a song about this dame an' I am singing it. Not that I gotta voice, because I ain't, but I am one of them guys who always feels that if Ma Caution hadda fixed it so's I was born with some honest-to-goodness vocal chords an' a face that wasn't like the Santa Domingo coasline I reckon all the lovelies woulda queued up to hear Lemmy tear off a couple of swing numbers that woulda made croonin' history.Revertin' to this Cactus Lizzie. I oughta tell you that this dame was in a song; an' for some reason that I don't know this song is sorta buzzin' in my head, keepin' time with the hum of the car. I got this jingle off some cowboy in Sonora two years ago, the time I brought in Yelltz for murder an' kidnappin'. All this cowboy had was a guitar, smokers' throat an' a hey-hey Mexican jane who took a run-out powder on him. He justa keep singin' it all the time until the noise of somebody readin' your death warrant woulda sounded like a comedy number it woulda been such a relief. Well… here we go…
