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Overview
BORDER TOWN GIRL
In a different life, Lane Sanson was a famous war correspondent and a bestselling author. He had been somebody. Now he’s a nobody, bumming around Mexico, lost, lonely, hungry for hope, a pushover for a border town B-girl . . . and the perfect fall guy for a lethal frame-up.
LINDA
As beautiful, as inviting, as treacherous as the sea around her, Linda is a woman who is used to getting her way. And if she doesn’t get what she wants, she has no qualms using force to take it. But this time, her betrayals have gone too far for her husband—or the law—to ignore.
Features a new Introduction by Dean Koontz
Praise for John D. MacDonald
“The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King
“My favorite novelist of all time.”—Dean Koontz
“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut
“A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best.”—Mary Higgins Clark
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307826961 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/11/2013 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| Sales rank: | 484,253 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
July 24, 1916Date of Death:
December 28, 1986Place of Birth:
Sharon, PAPlace of Death:
Milwaukee, WIEducation:
Syracuse University 1938; M.B. A. Harvard University, 1939Read an Excerpt
Border Town Girl
1
The tall girl was restless. She had dark eyes with a hard flickering light in them, like black opals. Her mouth was wide and soft and sullen.
It was ten o’clock at night in Baker, Texas. Her third-floor room in the Sage House had the hot breathlessness of the bakery she had once worked in—back when she was fourteen and had looked eighteen.
Five days in this hole. And it could be five more.
A half-block away a barn dance was in progress. She could hear the tinny whine of the music, the resounding stomping of boots. Somebody yelled shrilly, “Eeee-yah-hooo!”
“Damn silly cowhands,” she muttered. She lay diagonally across the bed. She had thrown the light cotton dress on a chair, the slip on top of it. The heat covered her body with a mist of perspiration. The spread under her was damp, so were the bra and the panties she was wearing.
She threw the movie magazine off the bed, sat up and tapped a cigarette on a long thumbnail the color of blood. As she lighted it a heavy strand of hair swung forward. The hair was the color of wheat, so expensively and expertly dyed that it looked natural. She tossed it back into place with a quick movement of her head.
As she sucked smoke into her lungs she looked around the room. Brown and green grass rug. Wicker furniture. Metal bed painted a liverish green. The mattress sagged toward the middle from all directions. Her two suitcases were on stands by the far wall, the lids open. A stocking dangled out of one, almost to the floor.
“You’re letting it get you, kid,” she said softly.
In her bare feet she paddled over to the larger suitcase and took the last pint out from under the rumpled clothes. She broke her fingernail on the plastic covering and cursed bitterly. She tossed the covering into the tin wastebasket by the bureau, then poured three inches of the rye into the heavy tumbler that stood on the bureau beside the Gideon Bible.
She stood in front of the bureau, staring down into the glass, hating the loneliness, the fear, the tension. The heavy rope of hair swung forward again. She stood in an ugly way, feet spread, shoulders slumped, stomach thrust forward.
“How, kid,” she whispered. She tossed off the tepid liquor, gagged slightly on it, poured some more in the glass and left it on the bureau top.
She went into the bathroom. The big old tub stood on feet cast to resemble claws. She put the plug in and started the water running. The pipes were so clogged that the water came out in a thin stream. She went back and got her glass and went to the front window. Starlight glinted off the Rio Grande. Across the way she could see the lights of small, dirty, turbulent Piedras Chicas.
A faint night breeze swayed the dusty curtains and cooled her body. She looked hard at the distant lights as though trying to see down into the streets, to see the man who would bring the package across the river.
When the tub was deep with lukewarm water she finished the second drink, went in and dropped her damp under-things on the floor. She got in and lay out as flat as she could. She looked down with satisfaction at the long clean lines of her body. She adjusted the angle of her head against the back of the tub. The heavy hair hung down into the water. She yawned and closed her eyes.
A flabby, moon-faced, middle-aged man came quietly down the hall. He wore a sports shirt loudly decorated with rodeo scenes. He listened outside her door, then slipped a paper-thin strip of tool steel out of his trouser pocket. His small pink mouth pursed in concentration as he slid the strip along the jamb. When it touched the latch he pressed hard, pulling slightly toward himself. There was a thin grating sound. He turned the knob slowly and pulled the door open a crack. He looked in, then looked up and down the hall.
He stepped lightly into the room and shut the door silently behind him. He drifted, soundless as smoke, across the room to the half-open bathroom door.
For a long time he studied her, his expression that of someone who intends to perform a difficult act with practiced confidence. Then he slipped his shirt off and threw it behind him. Rubbery muscles moved underneath the flaccid white skin. In two quick steps he reached her. She heaved up as his stubby white thumbs dug into the pressure points at the base of her throat. Her eyes rolled back into her head so that only two narrow slits of white showed.
He yanked out the plug and the water began to swirl down the drain.
Shaymen watched her for a moment and then began an expert search of the room. He slit the linings of the two suitcases, wrenched the high heels from five pairs of shoes, looked under the rugs, in the backs of the two pictures. He found it in a leg of the metal bed. The caster had been pulled out of the leg and what he wanted had been shoved up inside the hollow metal, then the caster had been replaced.
He slipped off the rubber band and the oilcloth. The tightly rolled bills expanded. Shaymen riffled the corners with his thumb. Hundreds, five hundreds and thousands. He frowned. He didn’t like the thousands. They called for a fencing operation and a discount. The recent activities of the Bureau of Internal Revenue had made the discount a big one.
He tucked the roll into his pocket and put his shirt back on, looking in at the girl as he buttoned it. Regret stabbed him briefly and was gone. He left the room after making certain that the hallway was empty. On his way down the stairs he nibbled the thin coating of glass cement from his finger tips. It had an acid taste. He spat out the hard flakes with small soft explosive sounds. It was always better than gloves. Didn’t arouse suspicion. Didn’t smother the cleverness of the hands.
In the lobby he bought a pack of cigarettes from the girl who was just cleaning the counter for the night. He smiled inside himself as he saw her staring at the shirt. It was so flamboyant that no one looked beyond it to his face.
Out on the sidewalk, which still gave off the remembered heat of the sun, he took a deep drag on his cigarette and walked west. The tourist court was a quarter mile beyond the city limits. Travelers sat out in the lawn chairs escaping the heat. They talked and laughed softly. Shaymen accepted the invitation to sit with them and have a cold beer. He was sleepy. He yawned a great deal.