Five Star Fugitive

Chapter Seven Ambush

When Tomkinton, Clavna and the Ranger named Vance came into the third-floor room, all Christy could do was look at them with his small, alert, blue eyes. Tomkinton came quickly back from the bathroom. He checked the top drawers of the bureau. He whistled softly.

“Bad, bad news, Clav. The bird has flown.”

Clavna cursed with great feeling. “Oh, that’s fine! That’s great! We can probably get jobs as ribbon clerks. You had to be the one to say we didn’t have to cover the whole joint because there was no reason for her to run.”

“Don’t try to pass the buck to me,” Tomkinton said hotly.

“No need to get in a fuss,” Vance said. “This is a tough town to run away from. I’ll put the lid on.” He picked up the room phone.

As he picked it up, there was a loud scream of rubber in front of the hotel. Tomkinton ran to the window. A blue convertible, several years old, rocked down through traffic. He squinted but the license was already too far away for him to read.

“Go down to the lobby and see what you can find out about the car, Clav,” he directed.

Vance, on the phone, was saying, “You already got the description. The Saybree woman. Yeah. Give them the word at the bridge and tell Hall that I think it’s hot enough to radio up the line for the usual road blocks. That leaves the airport and the bus station.”

He hung up and grinned at Tomkinton. He was a lean man with a saddle-leather face and the Ranger uniform sat well on his shoulders. “Least we got us a murderer — if you boys got the right dope on this guy on the floor. He is the one you called Christy, isn’t he?”

“That’s him,” Tomkinton said. Tomkinton was a young, round-faced man with the look of an affable bank teller. He walked over to Christy. He said softly, “Killing Shaymen was a mistake, friend. A bad mistake. Not up to your usual style.”

He took out his knife and cut the nylon. He yanked the towel from Christy’s mouth. Christy coughed and moistened his lips with his tongue.

“My wrists are killing me,” he muttered.

“Where did the girl go?”

“I don’t know. She left with a guy. Tall fella with a little bandage on his head. I never saw him before. The two of them busted me with a glass when I wasn’t looking. How about these wrists?”

Clavna trotted through the open door. “Hey, she left with a guy named Lane Sanson. He had a room on the second floor. They went down the fire escape and took off in a blue convertible. Here’s the license number. I wrote it down.”

Vance took the slip of paper and picked up the phone again. As he waited he said, “This’ll make it easier.”

Tomkinton frowned. “Lane Sanson. Lane Sanson. I’ve heard that name before. Wait a minute. Newspaper guy. War correspondent. Hey, he wrote a book! I saw the movie.”

Vance was talking softly over the phone. Clavna grinned. “A newspaper screwball. Boy, that’s all we need. What the hell do you think he thought he was doing, to leave here with the Saybree woman?”

“Maybe chivalry isn’t dead,” Tomkinton said.

“He’ll get chivalried all right,” Clavna said, his thin dark face alight with wry amusement. “He’ll get a belly-full.”

“Especially if they have the junk with them,” Tomkinton said.

Vance hung up. “All over but the shouting,” he said. “That car’ll be grabbed within two hours unless it sprouts wings. Already they got a report on it heading east.”

“How about taking this wire off me?” Christy whined.

Tomkinton knelt by him and untwisted the wire around his ankles first. Christy sighed and worked his thick legs. Finally the wrists were free. Christy got onto his hands and knees, then lumbered up onto his feet. He massaged his big white hands, inspected the wire cuts on his wrists.

“You guys are confusing me, talking about Shaymen,” he said. “I know the guy. I saw him in New York maybe three weeks ago. If somebody bumped him, it wasn’t me.”

“You killed him last night,” Tomkinton said.

“Nuts! Last night I was here, in Texas. How can I kill a guy in New York?”

“You killed him here.”

Christy looked at Tomkinton with blank amazement. “Here? Shaymen here? Well, I’ll be damned! What do you suppose he was doing here? Spying on me or something?”

“What did you come here for, Christy?” Clavna asked. “As if we didn’t know.”

“Well, boys, it’s like this. Miss Saybree run out on the boss. He was worried about her. He found out she was here. So he sent me down to talk her into coming back. He couldn’t get away himself. You know how it is.”

“He won’t be getting away for some time,” Clavna said.

Christy was motionless for long seconds. “What do you mean by that?” he asked in a low voice.

“You should keep up on these things, Christy,” Tomkinton said, smiling cheerfully. “The whole crew has been picked up. George, Al, Denny, Myron, Looba, Stace. Every one of them. And this isn’t just one of those suspicion deals. This is the works. Right down the line. They haven’t got a million to one chance of squeaking out. And neither have you. We’ll let the state of Texas take care of you for the murder, though. That’ll be the simplest, cleanest way.”

“I don’t know anything about no murder,” Christy said.

“Not even,” Tomkinton said, “with Clavna here tailing you. He saw you get picked up in front of a movie house in a car and noted down the license number. Vance told us it was Shaymen’s car, found this morning with his body beside it?”

Vance jingled the cuffs. He walked over to Christy. “Hold ’em out,” he said mildly.

Christy numbly stuck his big hands out. Vance started to snap the open cuffs down on the thick wrists. Christy’s hands flicked wide apart, then clamped down onto Vance’s wrists. The white wet-lipped face had gone completely mad. He flung Vance like an awkward doll directly at Clavna. The flying body smashed Clavna against the wall and, as they slid down in a heap, Christy reached Tomkinton in one bearlike bound.

Tomkinton was trying to scuttle backward and snatch the Police Positive from its awkward place in his right hip pocket at the same time. As he yanked it free, tearing the pocket, Christy’s right fist clubbed against the side of his head like an oak knot. The blow that knocked Tomkinton cleanly through the open bathroom door and sent him sliding across the tile to stop against the tub, fractured consciousness the way a piece of string is broken.

Vance, prone across the legs of the unconscious Clavna, was groggily shifting his revolver to his left hand, having found that there was no life in the right one. He fired once as he saw the heavy shoe swinging toward his eyes, swinging in slow motion, blotting out all the light in the world.

The slug tore through the top of Christy’s right shoulder, just above the collarbone. As an after-echo of the shot, he heard it smack into the wall behind him. A warmth and wetness ran down his chest and his back under the dark wool suitcoat. It drove him back a half step. His right arm still functioned. He snatched up the revolver from beside Vance’s hand and stuffed it inside his belt. He had never carried or used a gun. It always made him feel weak and sick to even look at one.

He opened the door, went quickly out into the hall and shut it. He was halfway down to the second floor when he heard steps along the second floor to the stairway, running steps.

Christy turned and stared up at the third floor. As the steps came up behind him, he said excitedly, “I heard a shot up there!”

The Ranger ran by him without a word. Christy turned and went down to the second floor, then down the next flight. He slowed his step as he reached the lobby. He walked out the front door onto the sidewalk. A state car was parked near the entrance. It was empty and the door was open.

Christy walked steadily down toward the bridge. The mid-morning sun was hot on the back of his neck. He could feel his shirt sticking to him.

He made himself smile and nod at the U.S. officials. “Just going over for a coupla hours,” he called.

The man waved him on. He paid the pedestrian toll to the Mexican guard in the middle of the bridge. The sun was a hot weight behind him, pushing him along. He touched his shirt pocket and felt the crispness of the bills he had taken from Shaymen’s billfold. Not much, but maybe it would be enough.

The guards at the Mexican end were checking cars as he walked by. They paid no attention to him. Barefooted women sat on the sidewalk, their backs against the wall, little piles of fruit and eggs in front of them. Christy felt weakness. The blood soaked the right side of his waistline.

A half block from the public square on the opposite side from the bridge he saw the sign. He climbed the dark stairway. There was one man in the waiting room. The nurse was a cute little thing in starched white. She spoke to him in rapid Spanish.

Christy sighed and took the revolver out. The waiting patient’s eyes widened and he crossed himself. The nurse gave a little cry of fear. He motioned them both toward the other door. The nurse opened it and backed in. The man slipped around her. The doctor looked up from the boy, whose infected leg he was treating, with sharp annoyance. His eyes narrowed as he saw the gun but the annoyance remained on his slim olive face.

“What do you want?” the doctor snapped.

“I’m shot. I want help.”

“Put the gun away.”

“Nuts. Tell the kid and the man and your nurse to go over into that corner and face the wall and keep their mouths shut. Hurry it up.”

The doctor spoke to the three. They meekly did as they were told. Christy put the gun in his left hand, shrugged his right arm out of the coat. He unbuttoned his shirt, pulled the cloth away from the wound and got his right arm out of the sleeve. Then he transferred the gun to his right hand and got his left arm out of the coat and shirt. He dropped them to the floor. The doctor watched him calmly.

Christy said, “Now fix me up, Doc. That’s a pretty little nurse. You try anything funny with me and I shoot her right in the small of the back.”

“You are a stupid man, señor. I can work easier if you sit down. There.”

“Is it bad?”

“No. It tore the muscle very little. Hit no bone. Hold still.”

Antiseptic burned through the wound. Christy sucked in his breath sharply. The doctor applied folded bandages to the entrance wound and the exit wound and bound them tightly in place with gauze, wrapping it over the shoulder, under the armpit and around the great chest. He anchored the bandages more securely in place with wide strips of adhesive.

“Done,” the doctor said.

“Now have the girl wash out my shirt in that sink over there and wring it as dry as she can get it.” He took the money from the shirt pocket and threw it toward the girl. She did as she was directed. The doctor spoke to the boy and he came timidly over. The doctor began to finish his work on the infected leg, while the boy watched the gun with wide eyes.

Christy put the damp white shirt on, and then the coat. The doctor looked up. “That will be twenty American dollars, señor.”

Christy laughed. “You make good jokes.”

The doctor turned white around the mouth. “This is my profession and I get paid for my profession, señor. Pay me or I shall go to that window and call to the police.” The dark eyes looked at Christy with contempt, without fear.

“Are you completely nuts?”

The doctor turned his back on the gun and walked steadily to the window.

“All right, all right,” Christy shouted. He threw two tens on the floor. The doctor spoke to the nurse. She picked them up and handed them to him.

“Do you want a receipt, señor?” the doctor asked mildly, amusement in his eyes.

“No,” Christy said thickly. He hurried out. In the waiting room he turned and called back, “None of you leave here for a half hour.”

The doctor and the nurse turned and stared at him as though he were already forgotten. The nurse handed the doctor a roll of adhesive tape and he once again bent over the infected leg.

Halfway down the stairway Christy stopped and tried to plan the next move. It would be wise to wait until nightfall. In some bar he could find a tourist. The tourist would have a car. A car would get him to Vera Cruz or Tampico. Somehow he would get on a ship. He wondered if he’d killed the Ranger. The man had slumped with his head at a funny angle.

Soon they’d check up and find he’d crossed the bridge. They’d be looking for him. The Piedras Chicas police would be looking. They’d have his description. He turned down another side street. It was empty. He found a barred wooden door set into a cement wall. He got his thick fingers around the edge of it, braced his feet and wrenched it open, hearing the squeal as the nails tore free. He went inside and pushed the door shut.

He was in a quiet garden patio. He stood and listened. He fitted the nails back into the holes, wrapped a handkerchief around his knuckles and drove them in. Again he listened. A small fountain tinkled in the middle of the patio. Christy crawled back into a place where the shrubbery was dense. He lay down with his back against the wall.

The torn shoulder throbbed. After an hour had passed, a stocky blonde woman with a ravaged face came out to the flagstones near the fountain. Christy watched her from the shadows. She spread a blanket, returned a few minutes later with a tall bottle and a tiny glass, and lay face down under the brute sun.