Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald Page A

were watching him. He felt as though at any moment somebody would look at him and recognize him and begin to yell. But Frank said people didn’t do that sort of thing. Take that man in the grocery store, while Frank had held the gun and he had cleaned out the cash drawer. Frank said if that man saw him on the street he would be a little puzzled. He would think he had seen him before, but he wouldn’t remember where or how. Billy hoped Frank was right.
    He had been thinking about girls a lot lately. There had only been that one time in the loft of the barn at Fowler’s place. He and Fowler and Dukie and that girl Christabelle, the one that wasn’t quite right in the head. It hadn’t been anything like he had thought it would be, and it had cured him of girls for quite a while, but now he was thinking of them again, and he felt a little unclean the way he was thinking about them. Funny, he thought, how you can be an escaped convict and have been in on fifteen… no, sixteen robberies with Frank and still feel guilty about thinking dirty.
    While Frank was gone he wondered what the girl would be like. Frank liked things with style. He guessed she would look like something out of the movies, and then the two of them would look down on him, instead of just only Frank. A real smooth dish, with silky legs and one of those wet red mouths and wise eyes. That’s what Frank would have. It made him feel small, thinking of how it would be after there were three of them, and he thought he would do an operation while Frank was gone, just to show him he could. He found a place that looked all right and he even went in and bought cigarettes there, but he couldn’t get his nerve all the way up to do it and he was afraid the man would see the bulge of the gun in his pants.
    So he worked each day and he went to the movies each night Frank was away, and on the fourth day when he got home from the supermarket, the Buick was parked by the garage apartment and he knew Frank was back with the girl.
    He went in and Frank introduced them. It shocked Billy when he saw the girl. She was just a plain country girl in a cotton dress and evidently not a damn thing else, standing there barefoot in the apartment, and she didn’t look over fifteen or sixteen. She had a kind of wide face and sleepy-looking eyes and she was built a little heavy, but she was really stacked. She pushed out on all parts of that cotton dress. “This is Hope Morrissey,” Frank said, “Billy Torris.”
    “Hi,” Billy said.
    “Hi, Billy,” Hope said.
    She had a thin country-sounding voice and she wasn’t at all like Billy had thought she would be. It made him look at Frank in a sort of different way, as though maybe Frank wasn’t what he had figured he was. Frank didn’t think she was too young or dumpy or anything. He seemed glad he’d brought her back, and glad to have her there. They seemed pretty used to each other. She couldn’t walk within five feet of Frank without him grabbing her, but she didn’t seem to mind or even hardly pay any attention. She’d brush on by like he wasn’t there. Anyway it was good to have somebody do the cooking, even if she couldn’t cook very good. She wasn’t very clean or very good about picking up around the place. Her ankles always looked sort of grubby and she never combed her hair much. Frank got clothes for her, but she liked to pad around in that old cotton dress, barefoot, humming to herself in a funny tuneless way.
    She slept in with Frank and just about as soon as they got in the room together, that noise would start and Billy would go on out a lot of the times and walk around until they were pretty certain to be asleep. Frank was at her all the time, it seemed like. Morning and night and then, on weekends, it was just better to be out of there and go to the movies or go over to the Beach. She certainly didn’t have anything to say. But after she came Frank would talk a lot more than before. He did a lot of walking