Scott O’Hara - Five-Star Fugitive [= Border Town Girl]

“That shows what you know.” Her eyes flashed. “It was all planned by them for you to be taken by the police for the murder yesterday. Children saw you sleeping here yesterday. In the market a thing is soon known all over town. But for me you would be in prison for murder.”

“I am truly sorry, chica.”

Her anger left and her smile was warm. “It is nothing.”

He pushed the bill toward her. “Here. This is yours.”

“No, it is much. It is more than four hundred pesos. You see, I know the value of dollars. What could I do with it? If I try to change it, the police will have me. Better you should give me some of your pesos if you wish to make a gift to me.”

He handed her his pesos. She took them without looking up into his face. She seemed suddenly shy.

“Muchas gracias, Felicia.”

“It is nothing, señor.”

He touched her cheek, slipped his hand under her chin and lifted her face until he could look into the deep wild gleam of the black eyes.

“Truly a daughter of many great kings,” he whispered.

She took his hand and kissed it. “Go with the Lord, Señor Lane.”

After lunch he walked back to the garage where he had left the car. The small man with large pimples charged him ten pesos for the work on the car.

To get to the bridge he had to circle the zocolo with its bandstand in the center, with the paths and rows of iron benches. Curio shops, churches and public buildings faced the square. As he turned the corner to head along the fourth and last side, he saw two uniformed policemen armed with rifles standing on the walk. A crowd had gathered but they stayed well back from the policemen, staring avidly at the crumpled form on the walk. Others came running up to join the crowd.

As Sanson drove slowly by, he saw the body of the stranger who had come to Felicia’s shack. His cheek rested in a spreading pool of blood. Blue flies buzzed in a cloud around his face. The skull was subtly distorted by the impact of slugs against the brain tissue. Sanson set his jaw, clamped his hands on the wheel and resisted the impulse to tramp hard on the gas.

At the Mexican end of the bridge he surrendered the tourist card, which he had renewed three times during the two years in Mexico. He signed it in the presence of the guard and was waved on. In the middle of the bridge he paid the fifty centavo toll.

At the American end, a brisk man in kahki stepped forward and said, “American citizen? Where are you coming from? Please bring your luggage inside for customs inspection.”

Lane made himself grin. “I wish I could. I did too much celebrating the other night. Somebody broke into my car and took everything. The only thing they left was the car itself.”

The man stared at him. “Have an accident?”

“Fell and hit my head.”

“Have you got proof of citizenship?”

Lane dug out his birth certificate. “This do?”

“Fine. Now open up the trunk, please.” The man shone a flashlight around inside the trunk, then climbed into the car and looked down into the well, where the top folded.

He turned around. “I have the idea I ought to know that name. Lane Sanson.”

“There was a book, six years ago. Battalion Front.”

The customs man grinned. “Hell, yes! I read that thing five times. I was a dough, an old infantry paddlefoot, so it meant something to me.” He backed out of the car. “You haven’t written something since that I missed, have you?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, that’s all the red tape, Mr. Sanson. Good luck to you.”

“Thanks.”

He drove down into the main street of Baker. Directly ahead, on the right, he saw the Sage House, a three-story frame building painted a blinding white. The entrance was dark green. He parked in front and went in. People stared at him. He was conscious of his heavy beard, the badly rumpled suit.

“I’d like a room, please,” he said.

The clerk looked at him with obvious distaste. “I’ll have to see if there are any vacancies.”

Sanson slipped the traveler checks out of the inside pocket of his wallet. “While you’re looking, tell your cashier I want some of these cashed. If you have a room, I want a barber sent up in thirty minutes. And I’ll want a portable typewriter, and my car put in your parking lot in the rear. I have no baggage. It was stolen over in Piedras Chicas. So, I’ll pay you in advance.”

Under the impact of the flow of imperious demands, the clerk’s dubious look faded away. “As a matter of fact, I notice that we do have a quite pleasant room on the second-floor front. It’ll come to...”

“I’ll take it. Send the boy up to open it up and wait for me while I cash my traveler checks.”

“Number 202, Mr. — ah — Sanson,” the clerk said, reading his signature as he wrote it. “If you’ll leave your keys here—”

“They’re in the car.”

“I’ll have a typewriter sent up, sir.”

“With a twenty-weight bond, black record carbon and glazed second sheets.”

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said, thoroughly quelled.

Once in the room. Lane threw his jacket on the bed. He stripped off his trousers and emptied the pockets onto the bureau top. He said to the boy, “Go over to the desk and write this down.” The bellhop shrugged and sat down. “Waist 32, inseam 33. That’s for the slacks. Now for the shirts. 16 collar, 34 sleeve. Go buy me two pair of slacks, gabardine if you can get them. Pale gray or natural. And two sport shirts, plain white, short sleeves.

“Take my suit along and leave it to be cleaned. Fastest possible service. I want a doctor as soon as he can get up here and, exactly one hour from now, a good barber to give me a shave and haircut. Oh, yes. Get some underwear shorts and some dark socks, plain colors, three pair, blue or green, size twelve. This ought to cover it.”

The bellhop scribbled some more. “Three pair shorts?”

“That’ll do it. Any questions?”

“You give me a fifty. How high you want to go on the pants and shirts?”

“Fifteen for the slacks, three and a half for the shirts. With what you have left over, get some fair rye. Bring up ice and soda.”

“This town is dry, sir.”

“It doesn’t have to be the best rye.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

The doctor arrived when the bathtub was almost ready. He inspected the cut, sighed, rebandaged it. “If you’d called me when it happened I could have put clamps in it and it wouldn’t have left much of a scar. Five dollars please.”

When he finished washing, the barber had spread newspapers and put a straight chair near the windows. Just as he finished, the bellhop arrived, laden with packages. Lane checked the purchases and tipped the boy. Ten minutes later, as he was dressing, the typewriter arrived, ice and soda following soon afterward. Lane sent the boy back for cigarettes.

When the door was shut and he was alone, Lane Sanson unwrapped the paper, rolled a sheet into the machine. He made a drink and set it near him. He lit a cigarette.

Across the top of the first sheet he typed:

He sat for a long time, sipping the drink. When the glass was empty, he began to work. The words came, and they were the right words. After six years — the right words. He forgot time and place and fear.

The C-47 run by the feeder line to Baker was a tired old plane. Inside, it had the smell and the flavor commonly associated with old smoking cars on marginal railroads. It had sagged and blundered its way through storm and hail, freezing cold and blistering heat. It had fishtailed into a thousand inferior runways. The original motors were five changes back. The air-frame was like the uppers of a pair of shoes resoled once too often.