Free Border Town Girl by John D. MacDonald Page A

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 bellyful.”
    “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 that it’s 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 could 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 suspicious 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 and seeing you get picked up in front of a movie house in a car and noting down the license number and then Vance telling 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 calmly.
    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 at Clavna like an awkward doll. 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 shoes swinging toward his eyes, swinging in slow motion, blotting out all the light in the world.
    The slug