Five Star Fugitive

Chapter Five Lorelei and the Newshawk

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 in it that had the deep tone 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 acknowledgement, 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 unshared by 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, 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. She pushed the door shut behind him. He knew at once that it was a singer’s voice.

He smiled. “I know this sounds silly. Maybe it won’t sound as 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 windows, her back to him. “Where is your car?” she asked without turning.

“Behind the hotel. In the lot. I got it 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 someplace.”

“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. He added, “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 came toward him. Her face had a frozen look and she walked in a way that showed off the lines of the long, lovely body. She stopped inches from the arm of the wicker chair. She said with calculated throatiness, “But if you could help me...”

He looked her up and down very closely, very coldly. “Darling, if you’re in trouble — I’ll try to help. Just because marks are like that.”

She sat down, her face in her hands. He realized that she was crying silently. He went over and put his arm around her.

“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, rimless glasses and a white, oddly distorted face. The girl looked up at him and Lane felt the sudden rigidity of great fear in her.

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 impression that the girl was warning him and yet trying to tell him something. He stood up and said mildly, “Well then, it looks like 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 with white face, tearing, meaningful eyes, at Lane.

“Now get out, mister. Real 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 picking up 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. He reached his hands slowly toward Lane. As Lane moved to the side to avoid them, he saw the girl standing off to the side, her hands clenched.

He hit Christy 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 shape.

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 for a moment in that position. Then, with a sigh, he went over onto his side, tugging the spread from the bed in his left hand so that it fell across his short stocky legs.

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

The girl was walking toward Christy with short steps. He called her, and she turned into his arms, laughing and crying and trembling from head to foot.

He 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, I imagine. Coat hangers ought to do it. The wire kind.”

She brought a handful of hangers. Lane rolled the man onto his face and wired the wrists together behind him, and then the ankles. He used three hangers on the wrists and three on the ankles, twisting the ends of each tight. Then he soaked a hand towel, jammed most of it into Christy’s mouth, and tied it in place with one of Diana’s nylons.

Only then did they sit down, utterly exhausted from the physical and emotional strain. As Lane sat in the stupor that comes after violent action, Diana went and knelt beside Christy. Numbly he watched her take a fat sheaf of large bills from an inside pocket. From another pocket she took a tight roll of bills wrapped in oilcloth and fastened with a rubber band. She sat very still with a curious expression on her face.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m busy adding two and two.”

“From here that looks like a lot of money.”

“It is.”

“Is that the money to pay for whatever is hidden in my car?”

“Yes.”

“Would it be too much trouble to brief me? Or would you rather not?”

She smiled at him. “Maybe some day I’ll be able to tell you how much I owe you.” She laughed. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Sanson. Lane Sanson.”

“I’ve got a phone call to make, Lane. I don’t want you to hear what I say.”

“That’s blunt enough.” He stood up. “I’ll wait outside.”

“Wait until I get my party. It may take some time.”

It had happened so quickly, so finally, leaving the big man grotesquely on the floor, that Sanson had a strong sense of unreality, a feeling that his violence had no relationship to actuality — indeed, that this had not happened. Now that it had happened, he knew at once that it was a commitment he did not care to make.

Once an act is performed there is no handy way to sidestep the immutable flow of events that stem from that act. With this act, a strong flow of events had been initiated. He did not know where they would carry him. But he did know, and there was fright in his realization, that through his act he had ceased to function in any way as a free agent. Thus he would be carried along with the events, a reluctant passenger.

He heard the murmur of Diana’s voice as she placed the phone call and it seemed to come from a great distance.

She hung the phone up and turned to smile almost shyly at him. She was one of those women about whom hung an indescribable muskiness, not something which could be scented, but rather felt.

“Sorry?” she asked.

“I don’t know how to answer that. I am and I’m not. I never did anything like this before. Lord, I could have killed him with that glass!”

“I would have been glad!”

“That’s nice. You could have sent cookies to my cell.”

She came to him and put her palms flat against his cheeks. When she kissed him, her lips had a faint sting, like candle wax that drops on the back of a hand.

“Thank you again, Lane,” she said.

He smiled very wryly. “Oh, it was nothing, really.” She stood so close to him that he could see the dark roots of her hair where it was growing out.

She turned away. “You’re a strange one, Lane Sanson.”

“Do you know chess?”

“No.”

“There’s something called a forcing mate. Your opponent makes a series of moves and you only have one possible response to each move. After the series of moves, you’re cooked. The first move was when a little gal came up to me in a bar in Piedras Chicas. Nothing I’ve done since then has been on my own.”

She looked at Christy. “Baby’s awake.”

The small blue eyes were open. He looked up at the two of them without expression. Diana sat on her heels in front of Christy’s face. She bounced the oilskin package up and down in her hand and her voice had a hard teasing note.

“This is going to make George happy, isn’t it?”

Christy didn’t answer. He was curiously immobile. Lane suddenly realized that the man was straining against the twisted wire. He bent over the wrists. The hands looked bloodless. As he watched, the wire cut into the flesh of the left wrist and the blood began to flow. The wire was taut, but it did not slip.

Diana laughed. The phone rang. She motioned to Lane and he went outside, closing the door.

Patton and Ricardo were on duty. It was a small basement room near the boilers, furnished with a chair, a table, a cot, one lamp, a phone, a washstand and a jumble of recording equipment. Ricardo snored on the couch.

Patton smiled tightly, lowered a cutting arm onto a fresh record, went over and shook Ricardo awake.

“This one you should hear, I hope, Rick,” Patton said.

Ricardo sat up groggily. He shook himself awake. Patton stood up and turned up the volume on the amplifier.

“Live like a coupla moles for half your life and—” Ricardo began.

“Shh!” Patton said.

“Here is your party,” the operator said.

“George! This is Diana.”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to—”

“Shut up, George, please!”

“Aren’t you getting a little bold, Sis?”

“I’ve got your present, George.”

“By heaven, you should have it! I gave Christy the money.”

“Christy, my love, happens to be tied up at the moment. With wire. Know what he had in his pocket? That little item that was stolen from me. Now I’ve got enough to buy it twice. Doesn’t that make you think, George?”

There was a long silence. The record revolved under the cutting arm, recording the hum on the phone wire.

“Kid,” George said, “maybe I jumped a little too fast. Maybe I got sore a little too easy.”

“Wouldn’t you say it was a little late for that? I would.”

“Kid, who clobbered Christy? That’s a good trick.”

“A new friend. You see, George, I need new friends. Seems like I can’t depend on the old ones.”

“Couldn’t we skip a little misunderstanding?”

“No, George. And speaking of little misunderstandings, the salesman met with a small, unimportant fatal accident.”

“It was expected. There’s a new deal lined up.”

“I don’t think I like you any more, George. I don’t think I like you handing me over to Christy.”

“Kid, did he say that? He was lying to you. Believe me. I wouldn’t think of a thing like that.”

“I’ve got a present for you, George, but maybe I’ll give it to somebody else.”

“Now hold on!”

“Squirm, George. Squirm nice.”

“Diana, don’t play games with me.”

“How’s your new protégé?”

“Kid, look! Here’s an angle. Give me the present and keep the double fee for yourself. It’s a nice wad.”

She laughed. “You know what, George? I kept myself from thinking about what a foul stinking business this is — just on account of you. And now I wish you were dead, George. Do you hear me? So maybe nobody will get the present.”

“Hello!... Hello!... Diana!” He rattled the hook. “Diana!” There was a sharp click as the phone was hung up.

Patton lifted the cutting arm off the record, picked it tenderly from the spindle and kissed it. “I love you, I love you,” he said.

Ricardo had already picked up the direct line. He made his report.

“Yes sir. That’s what the Saybree girl said. I can’t help what Tomkinton reported. He must have missed the transfer. That’s right, sir. She’s got it. Well, if she hadn’t gone out, she has to be calling from the hotel, doesn’t she? So that’s where Christy is.” Ricardo listened for a long time, unconsciously nodding as though his superior were talking to him face to face. “Right away, sir,” he said and hung up.

“Something new?” Patton asked.

“Tomkinton sent Clavna over this morning, down there in Texas, to look at some guy that got it during the night. Turns out it was an old friend of ours. Shaymen. Traveling under the name of Brown. Now that other phone call makes sense. The call when the girl reported the dough had been lifted. Christy must have sent Shaymen on ahead. He lifted the dough and then Christy must have killed him, since the body looks like Christy’s handiwork.

“We got word from our friends south of the border that they cleaned up the whole mob down there, but couldn’t find any sign of the last shipment. They got it across somehow. They’re going to flash Tomkinton and Clavna to pick up the little tea party down there. I got to take the record over. A car’s on the way to grab Georgie.”

Patton grinned. “End of the road, Boy, I’m going to rent me a cellar apartment. I won’t feel at home living above ground.”

“After the pinch, Pat, and after we report, would you be morally or ethically opposed to an evening of fermented juices, women and some nostalgic cantos?”

“I’m your boy.”

Ricardo opened the door. “I just happen to know a nice cellar bar...”

He dodged out as Patton snapped his cigarette at him.

As the door closed, Patton heard the warning dial tone. He shrugged and slipped a record on the spindle, put the cutting arm back in place. Odds were against any last-minute information, but you couldn’t be sure.

“Yes?”

“Al? This is George. I got to make a quick trip. Think you can hold the fort?”

“Maybe nobody’s told you, George, but without any merchandise there won’t be any fort to hold.”

“That’s all set. And you’ve got too much mouth over the phone, Al. Now get me a plane reservation to Houston and... hold on a minute. Somebody at the door. Hey, get the door for me, Delicious. I’m on the phone. And look, Al, I want to be sure to get down there no later than...”

Patton grinned and whispered, “Son, you ain’t goin’ noplace nohow.”

There was a mumble of voices and then he heard George say, his voice pitched high, “But there’s some mistake!” There was a click on the line.

“George!” Al said sharply. “Hey, George! What happened? George!”

A heavy voice came faintly over the line. “You can hang up now, Al. George’ll be busy for a long, long time.”

There was the clatter of the phone dropping from Al’s hand, several hoarse grunts, a scuffling sound, a padded blow and a moan. The phone was quietly replaced on the cradle.

Patton grinned with delight. He made a quick movement and changed the equipment over so that he could use the hand mike to record. He cut it right into the same record following that last conversation.

“And thus, friends, we bring to a close this concluding episode of our exciting drama entitled ‘The Snow Birds’ or, ‘Georgie Porgie goes to Atlanta’. This thrilling series has come to you through the courtesy of the Narcotics Division. Run, do not walk, to your nearest recruiting station and some day soon maybe you, too, can live in a cellar.”

It was all right. If the office didn’t think it funny, they could erase it from the record. Only one thing left to do now. Grab Christy and the gal. The retailers were being picked up in droves by now. Too bad about the gal. Nice husky voice. A looker, too.

But that’s what happens to little girls who run with the wrong crowd. A couple of years of that starchy prison food and nobody’d bother to look twice at her on the street.

The phone rang and Patton quickly grabbed it.

“Yes, I’ll unhook and pack up the stuff. About an hour and a half. Yes, I got one more. Just George calling Al and asking him to get him a plane ticket. The pinch came right in the middle of the conversation. Thanks a lot. Good-by.”

He hung up and, whistling softly, began to unhook the apparatus.