Border Town Girl

by John D. MacDonald

  “Come over here.”

  The color drained out of her face. She didn’t move.

  “Come over here, or I’ll come and get you.”

  She stood up as though she were eighty years old. She came to him, one slow step after another. “Closer, angel.” She obeyed. He sat on the bed and looked up at her, into her expressionless face. “You need to be straight on something. You think maybe you’re a person. You’re not a person any more. You’re a package. A thing. George gave you to me. Free and clear. Whatever I tell you to do, you do. When you don’t do what I tell you, I can make you very sorry your mother ever had you. I work for George. I earned you. You’re mine like my shoes, like my socks.”

  She did not look directly at him and she said nothing. Her face was like death.

  “It won’t be that bad,” he said in a huskier voice. “It won’t be maybe as bad as you think.” He caught her wrist and yanked her close to the bed. He reached up with his free hand, caught his fingers in the neck of her dress, ripped the dress down. She gasped but he held her tightly. He stripped away her dress, bra, half-slip so that they fell torn to the floor around her and she stood pallid and naked and afraid.

  “It won’t be so bad,” he crooned, and he began to giggle.

  From far away he heard her thin voice saying, “Don’t, Christy. There’s something wrong in your head. Something wrong and dirty and twisted and evil—and crazy.”

  Outrage drowned out desire. She had used a forbidden word. You could not use that word to Christy. He yanked down on her wrist, yanked her forward into the smashing open-handed blow against her jaw. She sprawled back, her face going blank, sprawled like a boudoir doll and fell on the grass rug on her left side. She rolled completely over twice, ending up on her face, one arm cramped under her. The fall had torn one shoe off.

  Christy sat breathing hard, waiting for the anger-mist to clear away from his eyes. He began to wonder if once again he had struck a woman too hard. He watched her narrowly and sighed with relief as he saw the lift of her breathing. He got up, took the key off the bureau and carefully locked the door behind him as he left.

  The blue Texas dusk was settling over the land. A lurid and impossible sunset flamed in the west. Christy walked slowly down the main street to the nearest drugstore, filled with the warmth of anticipation. He bought some chocolates, looked up the tourist court number and shut himself in the phone booth.

  He asked for Mr. Brown and the woman said she’d get him to the phone. In a few minutes he heard Shaymen say cautiously, “Brown speaking.”

  “Drop the guard, junior. This is that man.”

  “You just get in?”

  “I’ve been talking to the pigeon. You did good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You got it to turn over?”

  Shaymen hesitated. “If I feel like it.”

  Christy’s throat began to swell. “Look, Shaymen. I steered you into this. You know your fee. Let’s not get coy.”

  “Right now I’m in the driver’s seat. If I wanted to cross you all the way, I wouldn’t even be here. And the phone is no place to talk about it.”

  “Drive in and pick me up, then. In front of the Texan Theater.”

  “Right away.”

  It was almost dark by the time Shaymen pulled up in front of the theater. The door swung open. Christy climbed in and sat back with a sigh. “Just drive out of town a ways and park, Shaymen.”

  They did not speak again until Shaymen had pulled off the road. He offered Christy a cigarette, used the dash lighter.

  Christy chuckled. “I know you can’t cross me on the amount, Shaymen. She had George’s twenty-eight thousand bucks. And I got the second twenty-eight thousand.”

  “I don’t like those thousand-dollar bills.”

  “I’ll handle those. I know a guy. Now why the coy act?”

  Shaymen lifted his cigarette slowly to his lips. “So you tipped me a week in advance where she’d be staying so I could lift the roll. You tell me a little, but not enough. I’m not a hired man. I told you that before. You want me working, I’ve got to be on the inside. Call it a partnership.”

  “You’re a greedy guy, aren’t you? It worked the way I figured. George sent me down with cash to replace what you took off Diana. The purchase has to go through because he needs the merchandise. Even paying double for it he makes a nice profit once the stuff is cut. Forty kilograms. That’s a little over fourteen hundred ounces. The retailers have to make their end, you know, but even so, George clears forty bucks an ounce. There’s fifty-six thousand bucks at least. Plus two times twenty-eight thousand is a hundred and twelve thousand bucks.”

  Shaymen started. “Are you going to try to grab the stuff without paying what you brought down?”

  “Right. Those boys from across the line are supposed to be rough, but the Mexican Government is cracking down on them. George has been busy lining up a new source. I got all the dope on that. So if this source is going to dry up anyway, all we got to do is freeze them out and grab the stuff without paying.”

  “How about George? Won’t they let him know they didn’t get paid?”

  Christy laughed his high whinnying laugh. “You kill me, Shaymen. This isn’t hit and run. They may try to tell George and maybe he won’t be around to listen.”

  Shaymen whistled. “The works, eh?”

  Christy slapped his shoulder. “You and me are in, kid. We start in with a capital of a hundred and twelve thousand, with a brand new source of stuff, with the retailers in line and with George out of the way. Now give me that dough.”

  “It’s in a safe place,” Shaymen said. “Let’s just leave it there, huh?”

  “I don’t like your attitude, Shaymen.”

  Shaymen flipped his cigarette out the window. “I don’t care what you like and what you don’t like. So far we both got twenty-eight thousand. If what you say is right, I think we’ll have fifty-six thousand apiece. That makes a partnership, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve been taking orders too long,” Christy said. “From now on I’m giving orders.”

  “If that’s the way you want it, Christy, you can kiss that twenty-eight thousand good-by.”

  Christy reached over and clamped his left hand on Shaymen’s closed right fist. He slowly closed his hand. Shaymen made one futile, feeble effort to slam his left fist toward Christy’s face but pain brought it to a faltering stop. He threw back his head and screamed like a woman.

  Christy eased off on the pressure and said, “Where’s the money?”

  “Damn you, Christy! In my suitcase,” he said sullenly.

  Christy applied the pressure again. His arm and shoulder tightened and he felt, under his palm, the crisp pop of a bone. Shaymen screamed again and fell forward across the wheel, half-fainting, his weight against the horn ring. Christy pushed him back and the blare of the horn ceased.

  “Tell me where,” he demanded softly.

  Shaymen was panting as though he had run a long distance. “All right… all right. I’ll… tell you… it’s buried under… third flagstone from the front door of… the tourist court… put it there at night…”

  “You tried to lie to me, Shaymen. You tried to be a partner.”

  Now the mist was thick in Christy’s eyes. He ground down with all his strength. Shaymen made a damp bleating sound and slumped over against the door. Christy squeezed the closed fist inside his big hand, working his fingers alternately, feeling the solidity of the fist slowly disintegrate until it felt like a sack of gravel in his hand. And then suddenly it was limp and a small crooning sound came from Christy’s lips.

  He let the ruined hand drop. He wiped his own hand on the upholstery. The mist receded. He took a chocolate out of his pocket, picked off the tinfoil and put it in his mouth. He sucked at it.

  When his mind was made up, he pulled the unconscious Shaymen upright and broke his jaw with one smash of his clenched right fist. He got out and pulled Shaymen into the passenger’s seat, went around and
got behind the wheel. He drove back to Baker and then over toward the river to the Mexican settlement. There he found a sagging warehouse without lights and he turned out the car lights as he drove behind it. He stood outside the car for some time, listening. Shaymen was still breathing. Christy dragged him out of the car and stepped on his throat with the outside edge of his shoe. Shaymen’s breath whistled once and stopped. He turned Shaymen’s pockets inside out, emptied the wallet and threw it aside. He smudged his hands around the wheel and over the door handles.

  Death of one Mr. Brown, commercial traveler.

  Back in the hotel dining room Christy ate a large steak. He went to his room and napped until eleven. At half-past twelve, moving through the darkness like a shadow, he pulled up the flagstone, found the roll of bills in oilcloth under the packed dirt, dropped the stone back and melted off into the night. He was in the hotel a little after one. He paused at the foot of the stairs leading up to the third floor. The damn fool nearby was still typing furiously. Christy thought hard of Diana, trying to reawaken his desire for her, but all he could feel was a thick tiredness. Diana would keep. He went back to his own room, bathed and lay heavy in the darkness, the last chocolate melting on his tongue as he fell asleep.

  6

  AT SEVEN O’CLOCK LANE SANSON WENT DOWN to the parking lot behind the hotel. He looked behind the sun visor on his side of the car. Nothing.

  He walked into the lobby and inquired at the desk for Miss Saybree’s room number. This was something to do quickly, to get out of the way. He had been up at six to read the manuscript. There were crudities in it, he knew, but there were also places that had the deep tones of a great bell. In it was something of the flavor of Mexico. The preoccupation with death, the sun and the dust and the ancient faces. The patience and the hopelessness. He wanted Sandy to read it. He wanted to watch her face while she read it because it was not only confession and acknowledgment, it was hope and promise.

  But Sandy was forever gone. And everything he read, saw, did, touched, heard for the rest of his life would be but half an experience because it was not shared with the only one who had ever counted and would ever count.

  Sandy was so much on the surface of his mind that when the tall girl with the blonde hair opened the room door and stared at him with an odd mixture of surprise and relief he couldn’t think for a moment who she was and why he stood there.

  It was not easier to remember while looking at her. There was a deep illness of the soul in her black eyes. But in the wide, soft mouth, faintly sullen, in the uptilt of her heavy breasts and the animal curve of hip, there was a hard, demanding savagery that made the impact of her as frank as a quick word said in the moving darkness.

  “I have a message for you.”

  “Come in,” she said in what he knew at once was a singer’s voice. She pushed the door shut behind him.

  He smiled. “I know this sounds silly. But maybe it won’t sound so silly to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Charlie says you might like to buy my car. He recommends it. You can send him a payment through the other channel. No payment, no more favors.”

  “Sit down, please,” she said.

  He sat in the wicker chair. She went over and stood by the window, her back to him. “Where is your car?” she asked without turning.

  “Behind the hotel. In the lot. I got in last night. I was supposed to look at it this morning. If there was a present for me behind the visor, I was to go on my way. But there wasn’t. So I suppose that whatever Charlie is selling you is still in the car some place.”

  “You don’t know what he’s selling me?”

  “I don’t think I want to know.”

  “Then you’re smart.”

  “I didn’t expect anybody like you on the other end of this deal.”

  She spun around. He noticed for the first time that the left side of her mouth was swollen. Tears squeezed out of her eyes. “Shut up! Please shut up! I’m trying to think.”

  “Pardon me,” he said indignantly.

  She walked over and sat on the bed. She moved listlessly, without spirit.

  “By the way, Charlie is very dead.”

  “What!”

  “Oh, yes. And from the protective attitude of the police guarding his body, I rather imagine they shot him down. That was yesterday, early in the afternoon. Got him in the back of the head, from all appearances.”

  The quick look of interest faded from her face. She stared at him. “You don’t owe me a thing, not a damn thing, do you?”

  “Not that I can think of at the moment. Why?”

  “Skip it. You don’t want in on this. You look decent. You know what that means? A mark. That’s Christy’s word for people like you.” Her tone hinted of hysteria.

  “A babe in the wood?” he asked gently.

  “Exactly.” She looked hard at him for a long moment and then stood up and came toward him. Her face had a frozen look and she walked in a way designed to show off the long, lovely lines of her body. She stopped inches from the arm of the wicker chair. She said with calculated throatiness, “But if you could help me, I wouldn’t be—standoffish.”

  He looked her up and down very closely, very coldly. “Darling, you have been traveling with the wrong group. Go back there and sit down. If you’re in trouble, I’ll try to help. But not for the prize in the bottom of the package. Just because marks are like that.”

  She went back to the bed and sat down, her face in her hands. He realized that she was crying silently. He went over and sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him. Her body trembled.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “I’m a recruit. Attired in my shining armor, I’m riding to the rescue.”

  She laughed through her tears. “You fool!”

  “Spill it.”

  The door swung open. Lane looked up and saw a remarkably unappealing man. He had a body like an ape’s, wore rimless glasses on his white, oddly distorted face. The girl looked up at him and Lane felt her go rigid with sudden fear.

  The stranger planted his feet. “Friend of yours, Diana?” he asked mildly.

  “That’s right.”

  “How’d he get in?”

  “I phoned the desk last night when I got hungry. They brought up another key.”

  Lane kept his arm around the girl’s shoulders. It was petty defiance. The stranger acted a bit uncertain.

  The stranger jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door. “Out,” he said.

  The girl spoke quickly. “Oh, Christy can get away with little gestures like that.” She laughed nervously. “He used to be a strong man in a circus, you know. He’s never gotten over it. Once he gets his hands on you, brother, you’re all through.”

  Lane got the clear impression that the girl was warning him and yet trying to tell him something. He stood up and said matter-of-factly, “Well then, it looks as though I better shove off. By the way, Diana. That little matter we were just talking about—I haven’t changed my mind, but I ought to know if your friend here is it.”

  “What the hell is this?” Christy demanded.

  “He’s it,” Diana said quickly, “but I’ve changed my mind. Please don’t.”

  Lane hesitated. Diana stood up, too. Christy pushed between them and shoved Diana away from him so brutally that she staggered and nearly fell. She looked up at Lane, her eyes meaningful in her white face.

  “Now get out. Fast,” Christy said.

  Lane smiled broadly and said, “Let me get my cigarettes, if you don’t mind.” He had seen cigarettes on the bureau. He stepped quickly around Christy and went to the bureau. His back was to Christy. Instead of the cigarettes, he picked up the heavy glass tumbler. He glanced in the mirror and saw that Christy was looking at the girl.

  He spun with the tumbler in his hand, his right arm coming up and over. He threw it at the side of Christy’s head. It hit with a solid and sickening thud. The tumbler fell to the rug, bounced and
rolled away. Christy stood, his eyes filled with an inward bemused expression. Lane reached him in two steps. Christy was shaking his head slowly. Lane hit him in the jaw with all his strength. Christy rocked but he didn’t go down. His hands moved slowly toward Lane. As Lane sidestepped to avoid them he saw the girl standing a little apart from them, her clenched hands between her breasts.

  Lane hit Christy again and again and again. The only sound in the room was the thick, dead impact of bone on flesh. The little blue eyes were glazed and the glasses were jolted off so that they hung by one bow from the left ear. The big hands worked and there was something almost like a smile on Christy’s face. He could no longer lift his arms. Lane swung and the glasses bounced away and broke on the floor. A vast pain ran up his right arm from his knuckles. He had the horrifying feeling that Christy was slowly recovering from the blow from the tumbler. Lane grunted with the effort as he swung. Christy’s mouth was losing its shape. His jaw began to sag and a tiny spray of blood began to jet with each impact.

  Suddenly he dropped to his knees, one hand on the bed to hold himself erect. Lane, knowing that he was too arm-weary to punch the man again, swung the side of his shoe up against the point of Christy’s chin. The big head tilted back sharply. He was poised in that position for a moment, and then with a sigh he went over onto his side, tugging the spread from the bed with his left hand so that it fell across his short, stocky legs.

  Lane was trembling with weakness. “Good Lord!” he gasped. “I was beginning to think he couldn’t be knocked out.”

  The girl was taking quick, short steps in Christy’s direction. He saw her foot swing back and he grabbed her just in time, before the high heel slashed the unconscious man’s face. She turned into his arms, laughing and crying and trembling from head to foot.

  He held her away and slapped her twice. Bright color appeared in her cheeks and the sounds stopped as though a switch had been pulled.

  “We’ll have to tie him. With something strong. Coat hangers ought to do it—the wire kind.”