Border Town Girl (8 page)

The door burst open and Felicia was pushed into the room. Her face was sullen and angry. She turned and tried to spit at the khaki-clad Mexican official who had pushed her. He slapped her effortlessly and turned her around so that she faced Tomkinton.

She saw Lane at once. She ran to him and took his hand in both of hers and lifted it to her lips. Her eyes danced. “Lane! I see you again. I think never.”

“Get her away from him, Stan,” Tomkinton said to the ranger. “You handle it.”

The ranger pulled Felicia away gently. He questioned her in Spanish so fluent that Lane couldn’t follow it. She nodded energetically and answered in kind, pointing first to Lane and then to herself. He could almost follow what she was saying by her gestures. As she spoke she turned often and smiled at him.

At last the ranger held up both hands to stop the flow of words. He turned to Tomkinton. “It checks out. He got busted in the head because some of the boys working on the case over there mistook him for Charlie Denton and got overenthusiastic. This babe took care of him. Denton killed one of their plainclothes cops with a knife and made a visit to this girl’s shack. There he made certain Sanson understood that unless he brought his car across the bridge, he could be framed for the killing of the cop. The girl says Sanson had to leave his car at a certain garage. Just about the time Sanson was leaving to cross the bridge they got Charlie, as we know. I can see how this fella wouldn’t want to take a chance on trying to cross Denton.”

Felicia gave out with another long spate of Spanish. The ranger nodded. “She says that neither she nor Sanson knew what was in the package the men wanted. She says that Sanson is a good and honest man, but not very bright.” He grinned.

“Have her sit down over there and keep her mouth shut,” Tomkinton said. “It looks, Sanson, as though you might turn out to be lucky, after all. Now get the Saybree woman down here and we’ll check her end of it again. Then you can take statements from Sanson and we can let him go.”

Lane turned and smiled back over his shoulder at Felicia.
“Muchas gracias,”
he said.

“Shut up, mister,” the ranger said mildly.

Christy wasn’t burning and sweating any more. Now he had a chill so intense that he had to clamp his jaws tightly together to keep his teeth from chattering. When he had swum the narrow channel in the river the cool water had soothed the fire in his shoulder. But now he had the idea that it hadn’t done him any good.

He moved through the narrow stinking alleys, guided always by the blue letters in the sky which said “THE SAGE HOUSE.” He had lost the gun in the river, or else while he was running from the children. He couldn’t remember.

The river had washed away much of the filth, but his clothes still had a fetid odor. The swelling had spread down to his hand. It was visibly larger than his left hand and was a darker color.

He waited in doorways to avoid being seen. He was finding it hard to remember why he had to get to the hotel. It was all tangled in his mind. The girl was there, with the money. Shaymen had let him down. Then it seemed that he’d killed the girl back there near a fountain. It made his head hurt to try to straighten it all out. The only thing he was absolutely certain of was the great need to get to the hotel. When he reached the hotel he would remember why it was important.

And he wondered if he would ever be warm again.

It took time and planning to cross the main street. He had to go four blocks from the hotel and then wait a long time before he knew it was safe. Once he sat down in a doorway and before he knew it his eyes had closed. He awakened when he fell out of the doorway, his cheek against cinders.

Again there was the network of alleys and small streets. At last he came out into an open place which he recognized as the parking lot behind the hotel. He could not risk the alley entrance to the parking lot. There was too much danger of a car coming in or going out, fixing him in its lights. The other wall of the hotel was separated from the wall of a store by a space so narrow that he had to turn his shoulders to get into it.

He sidestepped along. Soon there was a lighted window above his head. He jumped up and grabbed the sill. With effortless strength, he pulled his heavy body up to where he could look in. It was the dining room. He clung there, looking at the people at the tables. He knew none of them. He tried to remember why he had come back here. Puzzled, he dropped back and continued his slow movement.

The next window was dark. The one after that was lighted. It was a bit higher than the last one. He missed the sill on the first jump.

On the second jump his fingers locked on the sill. He wondered vaguely why his right shoulder was so sore. He chinned himself on the sill and looked in.

It was a small room. An office. He saw her at once. Diana. Now he knew that she wasn’t dead. But her face had a funny, dead look about it. The window was open from the top but he couldn’t hear what she was saying to the young round-faced man behind the desk because of the funny roaring sound in his ears.

And that man sitting beside her. Now it was becoming clearer. Diana and that man. He remembered the man throwing something at him. A great blow against his head. There was a ranger, a Mexican girl and a Mexican official of some kind in the room. Christy gave them one quick glance. He wasn’t interested in them.

He dropped back to the ground to give himself time to think. George stood beside him, smiling his funny crooked smile.

“What the hell are you doing here, George?” he whispered.

George’s voice came from far away. It had a hollow sound. “I thought you might forget what I told you to do, Christy. I hear you’ve been crossing me up.”

“I wouldn’t do a thing like that, George. Honest!”

“You got to get in there and kill both of them, Christy. Diana and that friend of hers. You can do that.”

“There’s a couple of cops in there, George,” he complained.

“Remember, Christy, how strong you are. You can do it. If you don’t do it, I’ll know for sure you’re crossing me, Christy.”

“I’ll try, George. I’ll sure try. You know me.”

He glanced down the narrow space between the buildings to make sure no one was watching. When he looked back, George was gone. He blinked a few times and decided that George didn’t want to hang around. Or maybe he just couldn’t see him. It was hard to see since he’d lost his glasses. He wondered where he’d left them.

Too bad about the gun. With the gun, he could hang up there on the sill and pot both of them. Now he would have to do it another way. He moved to the side of the window and put his back against the store wall, his feet against the hotel wall. He began to hitch his way up. It was slow work. Finally he was on a level with the window. Then, maintaining the pressure, he hitched sideways until at last his feet, spread wide, were on the sill. He straightened his legs and his shoulders slid up the store wall. He flattened his hands against the wall and shoved himself toward the window as hard as he could, ducking his head below the upper sill. He hit the center bar of the sash, carrying screen, sash, glass and all forward with him into the room. He landed lightly on the balls of his feet, pawing at the ranger with what looked like a foolishly light blow. Yet it dropped the man over into the corner beside the desk.

As Diana jumped up he grabbed her with one big arm. With his raised foot he shoved hard against the front of the desk. The desk slammed Tomkinton brutally against the wall.

Laughing aloud, Christy held the kicking, struggling girl in one arm. His left hand caught Sanson by the throat as Sanson tried to come up out of the chair where he had been frozen with shock.

Then, as Christy yelled for George to come see what he was doing, a pain like a flame seared across the backs of his legs just above the knees. The strength went out of his legs and he fell heavily. He saw Diana roll free and scramble over to where Sanson stood, turning in his arms to look at Christy on the floor.

Christy leaned his head back and looked up into the broad-boned smiling face of the Mexican girl. Her dark eyes glittered like the onyx that had once been carved into knives for the use of the priests of the sun god. She showed her even white teeth as she smiled down at him.

The red-bladed knife gleamed in her hand.

From an enormous distance he heard the ranger saying in a dazed voice, “By God, she hamstrung him! She had that knife taped to her thigh and she come up behind him crouched as though she were going to cut the grass, and she hamstrung him!”

The wave of darkness hung above him, a silent dark crest, and then it fell forward onto him, spinning him down into it.

THE LETTERS HAD COME TO HIS DESK IN THE newsroom in Houston. The first two weeks had been difficult, but now he knew that he’d be able to hold his own. The first big story he had brought them, an eye-witness account of all that trouble down at Baker, had helped. They’d slapped a by-line on it, too.

The first letter was from his agent.

Dear Lane,

It is nice to have you rise from the dead and have you say in your letter that you’re going to keep on working. From the last mss, I’d say you need a lot of work.
A Daughter of Many Kings
has its moments, but it suffers from a lack of discipline and plan. Work from your carbon and see if you can send me a tighter version. And shorter. This novella form is an awkward length for that sort of thing.

He grinned and put the letter in his desk drawer, then opened the other one.

Lane dear,

I suppose you follow the news and I suppose it is no news to you that I’m going to be a sort of house guest for a year and a day. My lawyer says I’m very lucky, and I guess I can live through it. I am writing this while waiting for the transportation to my new address. George drew twenty and it doesn’t seem half long enough, somehow. Vindictive sort, aren’t I?

Anyway, Lane, I wanted you to know that you straightened me out when I needed it and I’m grateful. A year and a day from now I will have decided what sort of new life I want. It will be a law-abiding and uneventful one, believe me. I hope some day to do you a favor in return—if I haven’t
already
done it.

Your Diana

He shrugged. The last part of the letter seemed incoherent. Not hard to understand how a girl in her spot might be a little incoherent.

He put her letter in the drawer, too, stood up and clapped his hat on the back of his head. The managing editor came across the newsroom toward him.

“How’s it going, Lane?”

“Good, thanks.”

“Say, you’ll have no trial to cover down the line. The infection finally killed that Christy citizen. They didn’t get the arm off soon enough, I guess.”

Lane sighed. “That suits me.”

“By the way, that was a nice job you did on the transit squabble.”

“Thanks again.”

He left, whistling. He went down the stairs, grinned in at the girls behind the classified ad counter.

As he reached the outside door he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a girl coming quickly toward him. He turned and gasped. “Sandy! Sandy, what—”

Her eyes were shining. “Don’t talk, darling. Just walk with me.”

Her hand was through his arm as they walked down the sidewalk. He smiled down into her face and she squeezed his arm lightly.

“I had to shut you up, you oaf,” she said. “I was about to cry.”

“I remember that you cry nicely. Sandy, why did you come here?”

“To see my ex,” she said smugly.

He stopped and faced her. “I’m no good for you. Didn’t we find that out?”

“Hush. I might give you a second chance. If you want it.”

“If I want it!”

“I’ll think it over, oaf.”

“After what I did to you, Sandy?”

“Or what I did to you. Damn a wife who runs out when she’s worst needed.”

“I chased you out.”

“You did
not.
I left.”

“By special request. Who cares? You’re back. But how come? How did it happen?”

She took his arm again. “Come on, keep walking. You see, I got a letter. From a girl. Quite a girl, I think. She mentioned that she ran into you and you seemed to be carrying a torch for one gal named Sandy, so she wormed the address out of you. It was signed Diana Saybree.”

“So that’s what she meant!” he said.

“What, darling?”

“Never mind. Look, I’ve got a small apartment just three blocks from here. There’s ice, gin and vermouth. They need a woman’s touch.”

He quickened his pace but she stopped and made her eyes wide. “But I can’t! I just remembered.”

“What? A date?”

“No, I just remembered that I’m a single woman. Heavens! I’d be compromised.”

“Huh!” he said.

She laughed in the old well-remembered way. Again she took his arm. “Come on, you big mental hazard. What’s your address?”

LOOKING BACK, I THINK IT WAS RIGHT AFTER the first of the year that Linda started hammering at me to take my vacation in the fall instead of in the summer. Hammering isn’t exactly the word. That wasn’t Linda’s way. She started by talking about Stu and Betty Carbonelli and what a fine time they’d had when they went south for their vacation in November. And she talked about the terrible traffic in the summer and how dangerous it was. And about how not having kids made it easier too.

I kept my head down, thinking that this would blow over like most of her ideas. I wasn’t at all keen on this one. I knew it would mean more expense. Linda never thought or talked about money except when we didn’t have enough for something she wanted to do or wanted to buy, and then she had plenty to say. Actually, I never cared much for vacations. Sure, I like to get away from the plant for a while, but I’m content to stay around the house. I’ve got my woodworking tools in the cellar, and I like to fool around in the yard. There’s plenty to do.

Three years ago we did stay right at home. I thought it was the best vacation we ever had, but Linda kept saying it was the worst. This was the first year I was due to get three weeks with pay instead of just two, and she brought that up too, telling me how it would give us a real chance to get away.