The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper by John D. MacDonald Page B
Authors: John D. MacDonald
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me Rick. If you're not Rick, you've got more problems."
The blood had pone out of his face. Instead of turning his eyes, he turned his whole head toward her.
In a breathy dog-whistle squeak she said, "But he knows because... I never... when he was..."
"You cheap little bum," he said in a pebbly voice. "You dirty little hot-pants slut. You..."
And by then his head was turned far enough, and I made the long reach for the kick and put a lot of energy and hope and anxiety in it, because there was so little barrel jutting out over the back of the chair. But I hit it hard enough to numb my toes and hard enough to kick it out of his hand and over his head. It hit the wall and bounded back, spinning along the rug. He pounced very well and even came up with it, but I was moving then, adjusting stride and balance as I moved, and got my turn and my pivot at the right place and, keeping my wrist locked, put my right fist into the perfect middle of that triangle formed by the horizontal line of the belt and the two descending curves of the rib cage. He said a mighty hawff and sat solidly on the floor about four feet behind where he had been standing, rolled his eyes back into his head and slumped like Raggedy Andy. I scooped up the revolver and knelt beside him and checked heart and breathing. It is a mighty nerve center, and fright had added lots and lots of adrenalin to my reaction time, and it can so shock the nervous system that the breathing will stop and the heart go into fibrillation.
I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and I lunged for the girl and caught her just as she got her hand on the door. I spun her back into the room, forgetting her bad ankle. She fell and rolled and started to get up, then lay there curled on the floor, making little smothered hopeless sounds of weeping.
Her Rick was too big to fool with, and I found a couple of wire hangers in the closet, leftovers hung in with the wooden kind that fit into nasty little metal slots so you won't steal them. I straightened one into a straight piece of wire, then held his wrists close together by grasping both his arms just above the wrist in the long fingers of my left hand. I put the end of the wire under my left thumb and then quickly and firmly wrapped it around his wrists as many times as it would go, then bent and tucked the two ends under the encircling strands. It is a wickedly effective device. And quick.
I went over to her and picked her up and sat her on the edge of the bed. She sat blubbering like a defeated child. I squatted and examined her ankle. It was solid and shapely, and beginning to puff on the outside, just below the anklebone.
"I 1-1-love him!" she said. "That was a... a wicked... a wicked evil thing for you to do. That was... a wicked evil lie."
Her wig was askew and I reached and plucked it off. She was a sandy redhead with a casual scissor cut. Without the wig her face was in better proportion, but the eye makeup, particularly with much of it making black gutters down her cheeks, look ridiculous.
"Wick-wick-wicked!" she moaned.
"But there's nothing wicked and evil about picking me up and knocking me out with a Mickey? Go wash that goop off your face, girl. Besides, if I busted it up, maybe I did you a favor. He'll never leave Janice and marry you."
I helped her up. She went limping toward the bathroom. She stopped suddenly and stood quite still, then turned and stared at me. "That was right aft-after he came in, that about Jan-Janice! Then you were never... Then you just pretended... all along you knew?"
"Go wash your dirty face, honey."
When she closed the door, I emptied Rick's pockets and took the stuff over to the desk and looked at it under the light.
The identification startled and alarmed me. I had thumped and wired up one Richard Haslo Holton, Attorney at Law. He was a county Democratic committeeman, an honorary
The blood had pone out of his face. Instead of turning his eyes, he turned his whole head toward her.
In a breathy dog-whistle squeak she said, "But he knows because... I never... when he was..."
"You cheap little bum," he said in a pebbly voice. "You dirty little hot-pants slut. You..."
And by then his head was turned far enough, and I made the long reach for the kick and put a lot of energy and hope and anxiety in it, because there was so little barrel jutting out over the back of the chair. But I hit it hard enough to numb my toes and hard enough to kick it out of his hand and over his head. It hit the wall and bounded back, spinning along the rug. He pounced very well and even came up with it, but I was moving then, adjusting stride and balance as I moved, and got my turn and my pivot at the right place and, keeping my wrist locked, put my right fist into the perfect middle of that triangle formed by the horizontal line of the belt and the two descending curves of the rib cage. He said a mighty hawff and sat solidly on the floor about four feet behind where he had been standing, rolled his eyes back into his head and slumped like Raggedy Andy. I scooped up the revolver and knelt beside him and checked heart and breathing. It is a mighty nerve center, and fright had added lots and lots of adrenalin to my reaction time, and it can so shock the nervous system that the breathing will stop and the heart go into fibrillation.
I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and I lunged for the girl and caught her just as she got her hand on the door. I spun her back into the room, forgetting her bad ankle. She fell and rolled and started to get up, then lay there curled on the floor, making little smothered hopeless sounds of weeping.
Her Rick was too big to fool with, and I found a couple of wire hangers in the closet, leftovers hung in with the wooden kind that fit into nasty little metal slots so you won't steal them. I straightened one into a straight piece of wire, then held his wrists close together by grasping both his arms just above the wrist in the long fingers of my left hand. I put the end of the wire under my left thumb and then quickly and firmly wrapped it around his wrists as many times as it would go, then bent and tucked the two ends under the encircling strands. It is a wickedly effective device. And quick.
I went over to her and picked her up and sat her on the edge of the bed. She sat blubbering like a defeated child. I squatted and examined her ankle. It was solid and shapely, and beginning to puff on the outside, just below the anklebone.
"I 1-1-love him!" she said. "That was a... a wicked... a wicked evil thing for you to do. That was... a wicked evil lie."
Her wig was askew and I reached and plucked it off. She was a sandy redhead with a casual scissor cut. Without the wig her face was in better proportion, but the eye makeup, particularly with much of it making black gutters down her cheeks, look ridiculous.
"Wick-wick-wicked!" she moaned.
"But there's nothing wicked and evil about picking me up and knocking me out with a Mickey? Go wash that goop off your face, girl. Besides, if I busted it up, maybe I did you a favor. He'll never leave Janice and marry you."
I helped her up. She went limping toward the bathroom. She stopped suddenly and stood quite still, then turned and stared at me. "That was right aft-after he came in, that about Jan-Janice! Then you were never... Then you just pretended... all along you knew?"
"Go wash your dirty face, honey."
When she closed the door, I emptied Rick's pockets and took the stuff over to the desk and looked at it under the light.
The identification startled and alarmed me. I had thumped and wired up one Richard Haslo Holton, Attorney at Law. He was a county Democratic committeeman, an honorary
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