Lone Wolf #12: Phoenix Inferno by Mike Barry

way into the ignition and pushed it to start. Nothing. Not a sound.
    Dead solenoid? It was the only possibility on which he could work; everything else would be too complicated. Wulff got out, strained with the hood, opened it, found the ignition block and assembled the wires. Taking another set of keys out of his pocket he bridged the gap between solenoid and battery, went around to the car to make sure that the keys were at the “on” position, then tried it again.
    Slowly, groaning, mumbling, the car fired. It stalled and Wulff tried it again, but the starter motor whined and it flooded. All right. Even Cadillacs were not immune to corroded engines, ruined wires, but there was life in the old bastard yet, he could give it a try. Get a Cadillac and drive a fine car. Luxury with economy. The standard of the world for more than fifty years. Another side to Cadillac. Economy plus efficiency. Four hundred seventy-two cubic inches of power. Overhead valve V-8. Turbo-hydromatic transmission with selectra shift. He bridged the solenoid again, used a hand to carefully pump the open carburetor, clearing the air-cleaner to the side. The engine started. It rumbled and then settled into low idle, rife with misses. Twelve hundred rpm but firing.
    All right. He stood aside, slammed down the hood, went to the driver’s seat and pumped the gas gently until the car began to idle steadily, the high whine of the carburetor balanced off against the rattling of the misplaced aircleaner. Screw it. He was not going to open that hood again under any conditions.
    Wulff settled himself into the driver’s seat, had dropped the car into gear and was already crawling forward, bumpers clearing with a scream from the Bonneville until he thought of Owens. Owens was still next to him. Regardless of what he thought of the man and the circumstances in which he had died, there was no way he could convey a corpse to his destination.
    He hated to do it. Owens had meant more to him than Wulff, quite possibly, was willing to admit. He did not even want to think of the pain of that revelation, shuttled it to one side, this was no time to think of Owens. Later. He might think of him later again and then he might not; it all depended. The man was dead. Dead meat. You could not sentimentalize that which was afflicted with corruption.
    He got out of the car putting the gearshift into park, racing the engine a little more to steady it, tugged open the passenger side, and slid Owens out to the floor of the desert as if he were a fish coming through layers of water to the surface. The thing that he threw on the desert had no relationship to Owens, did not remind him of Owens, bore no resemblance to Owens at all. To show that he had no feeling, that he had separated the remains from the image of the Owens-that-had-been, Wulff kicked the corpse once hard in the side and then slammed the passenger door closed again, went around and into the driver’s seat, pulled the door closed.
    Time to go now. Time to be on the move. But something unaccountably was missing. Even though he could not quite name it, even though he could not come to grips with what was wrong the feeling that things had not yet been completed overwhelmed him, slammed at him in a sickening way. It had something to do with the corpse, Wulff guessed. It had something to do with granting honor unto the corpse. But the remains were not the person. “It’s all right,” he said then, wheeling the car slowly past the dead man, “it’s all right. You can rest. I’ll get him. I’ll get the man who did this and make him pay. I’ll make him feel the pain.
    “I’ll fix him,” Wulff said to the dead man who was not really dead, “I’ll fix the bastard who did this to you and make him pay for it and make him hurt,” Wulff went on, and then he drove into the desert slowly, engine knocking, rough acceleration, heading toward the fearful, insulated man named Carlin who lived on a hundred acres of the