Five Star Fugitive

Chapter Eight Snowbirds’ Social

It was blue dusk when Lane Sanson awoke. He sat up with a start, feeling for the car keys in his pocket as he turned, feeling the keys at the same instant as he saw the car, as he saw Diana sleeping in the back. He exhaled slowly. There was a tang of burning cedar scrub in the air and he heard the distant tank-tankle of goat bells.

Sleep had ironed out the torment in her face. It was almost the face of a child. She lay on her left side, facing him, both hands with the palms together under her cheek. A thick rope of the blonde hair lay forward across her throat. He lit a cigarette and watched her in the gathering darkness as he smoked, thinking that few things in the world are more beautiful than the line of a sleeping woman.

His watch had stopped at four. The car clock would still be operating. Soon it would be time to turn back to town. He wondered if he had made a mistake by not insisting that they turn back as soon as she had agreed that it was the thing to do. But if they had been picked up on the road, it might have appeared that they were doubling back, still in flight. Darkness would give them a good chance to reach the hotel without being stopped.

He wondered if Diana could go free by giving evidence. He hoped so.

She began to make small crying sounds in her sleep. Her shoulder twitched. He butted his cigarette against his shoe-sole. She awoke with a start and a frightened cry.

“Oh, Lane!” she said. “I was frightened. I was running and running and the ground was going by under my feet, carrying me backwards no matter how hard I ran and Christy was standing and grinning and waiting for me.”

“We’ve got to go, kitten.”

She stood up and smoothed her dress down with the palms of her hands. “Gee, I’m messy,” she said.

“Still think I’m wrong to take you back?” He stood beside her.

She smiled up into his face. “You gave me a chance to make that decision. I watched you while you slept. There was the car and I knew the keys were in your pocket. There was even a rock. See it over there? As big as a baseball. If I hadn’t decided you were right, you’d have a terrible headache by now, Lane.”

“A little trusting of me to go to sleep, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe that’s why I couldn’t hit you.”

“Well, get in the car. Let’s get this over with.”

He turned the lights on and backed the car around, drove slowly down to the highway. She said, “While you were asleep, a plane was cruising around. I think maybe it was looking for us.”

“We’re important people.”

“Aren’t we though! Oh, Lane. This is so silly. I feel excited, as though I were going to my first dance or something. Why is that?”

“Relief. You don’t know how terribly afraid and guilty you’ve felt ever since you found out what you were mixed up in. Now the decision is made and you aren’t afraid any more.”

“Is it that simple?”

“Why not?”

“Maybe part of it is you, Lane.”

He glanced over at her. “How do you mean?”

She looked straight ahead at the road. “Maybe I love you.”

“I don’t think you should. I mean it’s something that I can’t return.”

“Sandy?”

“I guess so. One-woman man.”

“I thought that might be the way it is. I don’t care.” She moved over close to him. Her shoulder touched his arm. “We’ll pretend we’re driving to a dance or something, shall we?”

“They’re having a good band. And a multi-colored tent for refreshments.”

“There won’t be too many of those square dances, will there?”

“We’ll sit those out, kitten.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. She sang the rest of the way into Baker. Old songs. The good ones. Her voice was husky and true. He had the feeling that she was singing not to him but to the past and that this was, for her, a sort of farewell.

Then there were the lights of Baker ahead, the neon on the tourist courts, the cars flanked outside the drive-ins, the floodlights on the bridge. As soon as they were in the town she moved away from him, sat huddled and silent.

He parked a hundred feet beyond the hotel entrance. The space was short and it took him a long time to work the car in next to the curb.

“You stay right here,” he said. “Let me handle it.”

He had by habit taken the keys from the ignition. He saw her looking at him. Beyond her he could see through the open door of a drugstore. It all looked so completely sane and ordinary that for the passing of several seconds he had the feeling that all this was a masquerade of some sort, that there was no truth in what Diana had told him, that it was a cleverly planned fantasy and any moment now a group of friends from the old days would leap from the shadows, laughing, confessing, explaining.

He threw the keys over into her lap, got out and chunked the door shut. He walked with long strides to the hotel entrance and, with his head high, he went in, wearing what he fervently hoped was a confident and optimistic smile.

At dusk the chunky blonde woman stood up and stretched. During the long afternoon she had repeatedly filled the small glass and drank it. Christy was tortured with thirst. And there was a new fear in him. The shoulder now felt hot and swollen and the pulsing was worse. He had felt the heat creep up from the base of his neck, flushing his right cheek, extending the throb to the heavy jaw bone and his right ear.

It was hard to remember just where he was, and why he was hiding. He would remember perfectly — and then there would be a funny aching twist in his head, and he would be back in the carny days. He’d missed the afternoon performances. Big Mike would be sore. He had to get out of here and get back to the lot.

He lay and he could hear his heart beating. A heavy frightening beat. Thrum, thrum, thrum. Then there would be a subtle change of rhythm. Ta-thum, ta-thum, ta-thum.

His mind dipped and sped back to here and now. The carny was years ago. Why had George sent him here? No, it wasn’t George. The cops had George. Unless that guy was bluffing, they had him good. Nailed. Along with the rest of the mob.

That Diana had been the cause of this. He created her image in his mind, the sneering mouth and the contemptuous eyes. Figured she was too good for Christy. He’d show her. He’d do a good job of showing her. He grinned as he remembered how she’d fallen when he’d hit her. He’d waited a long, long time for Diana. Patient waiting. And there she was, just thirty feet away. The great ropey fibrous muscles tightened and his breath came short and fast.

Then Diana turned and he saw that it was the other woman, the one who had laid under the whip of the afternoon sun.

He held his breath as she started directly toward him. She walked uncertainly. She had filled the empty bottle in the fountain and she paused to pick flowers and shove them clumsily into the neck of the bottle. She talked to herself.

Christy tried to make himself smaller. Now she stood close to him, so close that he could have reached out under the bush and touched her foot.

When she gasped and jumped back, Christy lunged up, through the brush, clamped his hand on her throat and pulled her back down to the dark place where he had been hiding. She fell like a fat sawdust doll.

He whispered, “When I let go your throat, I don’t want no screaming.”

He took his hand away. Even in the dusk and the shadows he could see that her throat had a funny, smashed look. Her face was slowly darkening, the eyes protruding, the swelling tongue growing between the lips.

One hand slapped the ground weakly and her heels hammered the dark damp soil at the base of a bush. She lay still. It took him quite a while to realize that she was dead. Something funny had happened to her throat.

“Diana!” he said. He shook her. “Diana!”

But it wasn’t Diana, of course. He rolled his big head from side to side like a wounded bear. He crouched over her until it was full night.

Then he crawled on his hands and knees to the fountain. He lay on his face, put his mouth into the water and drank deeply, as an animal will drink. Then he stood up. His right shoulder was a great pulsating fire. The fingers of his right hand felt swollen and stiff.

“Infection,” he said aloud. He frowned and tried to puzzle it out. Then, like a blow across the mouth, came the vision of the supperating leg of the boy the doctor had been working on.

“Didn’t wash his damn hands,” Christy mumbled. “Didn’t wash his dirty damn hands. Did it on purpose.”

He went to the gate and broke it open again. As he pulled it shut behind him, he had another one of those moments when he couldn’t remember what city this was, what year it was, where he was supposed to go. He leaned against the wall with the warm breeze against his face. He shuddered.

He remembered that he had to get a car. He went toward the zocolo in a lurching, ungainly walk. The zocolo was brightly lighted. He pulled back into the shadows as he saw the policeman standing sixty feet away.

A small boy tugged at his pant leg. “Geeve me money, meester. Geeve me money, meester.”

Christy slapped at him and missed. The child danced off into the darkness, screaming at him in Spanish. The policeman turned and looked toward the mouth of the dark street.

Christy turned and went back down the street, running heavily, the breath whistling in his throat, his mouth open and straining for air. The child danced along behind him, chanting, “Geeve money, geeve money meester, geeve money.”

After two blocks the street was no longer paved. He could see the flame flicker inside the open shacks of the poor. Other children had joined the first one. They followed him, making a game of it, making a song of it. Then there was no street and dogs snapped at his heels. He tripped, fell, rolled among the filth and excited yammerings of chickens. People watched him from the doorways.

The group of dogs and children grew. This was as much fun as a fiesta. Look at the big burro! Down he goes again! Now up again and running. Come on, amigos! Faster! Geeve money, Joe. Hey, Joe! Geeve money. Ai, he’s down again. He runs for the rio.

Each breath that Christy took was a sob. His side was one vast pain and his legs were leaden. Suddenly there was a steep pitch of bank. He saw the evil shine of the water and, too late, he tried to stop. He rolled heavily, helplessly down the bank. He rolled into the water. It was inches deep.

He stood up, dripping, and saw the line of screaming pointing children at the crest of the bank, outlined against the last thin light of the night sky. Dogs leaned over the edge of the bank and barked bravely, boldly.

The shock of the water had cleared his head. Christy looked down-river and saw the lighted bridge. He turned and plodded out into the river. The yells of the children grew more faint. The water came up to his knees. Walking became more difficult. Then it was midway up his thighs. The river seemed impossibly wide. It reached his waist and for the first time he felt the gentle tug of the current.

Ahead, suspended in the air, a blue neon sign high over the town clicked on, brilliant against the blackness. The Sage House.

With his eyes fixed on the sign, he moved steadily forward.

Tomkinton sat grimly behind the desk of the hotel manager. Lane Sanson sat in a chair planted squarely in front of the wide desk. A Ranger stood stolidly behind Lane’s chair.

“Look,” said Lane, “I just want to...”

“Please shut up,” Tomkinton said emotionlessly. “You’ve told your story. We’ve made arangements to have your ‘character’ witness brought over, if they can find her. In the meantime there’s nothing you can say.”

“You can’t treat me like a criminal.”

Tomkinton smiled without humor. “We’re not, so far. We’re treating you like what you are. A fool. You’re one of those people who think they can apply their own set of special moral standards to the world. Yesterday night a man was killed in this town. This morning a Ranger was killed and my co-worker was badly injured. We’re in no mood to play patty-cake with the likes of you, Sanson. You’re just a damn dilettante with so little sense you got mixed up in this mess.”

“Where’s Miss Saybree?”

“She’s under guard. You can’t see her. We have plans for her.”

“She came in of her own free will, remember.”

“That’s something for the court to take into consideration, Sanson. We’re going to clear you if we can, just so we can get you out of the way. And if we can’t clear you, we’re going to see that you pay the maximum penalty the law allows. So don’t waste your breath and my patience trying to tell us our business.”

“I only...”

“For heaven sake, shut up, can’t you?”

Sanson looked down at his knuckles. He flushed. What this Tomkinton person said was unfortunately true. He had been the worst sort of fool. The Ranger behind Sanson stirred restlessly.

The door burst open and Felicia was pushed in. Her face was at once sullen and angry. She turned and tried to spit at the kakhi-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, her eyes dancing. “Lane! I see 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 to smile at him.

At last the Ranger held up both hands to stop the flow. He turned to Tomkinton. “It checks out. He got busted in the head because some of the boys over there working on the case mistook him for Charlie Denton and got over enthusiastic. This babe took care of him. Denton killed one of their plainclothes cops with a knife, visited this girl’s shack and 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 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.