A Shroud for Aquarius
- Автор: Коллинз Макс Аллан
- Серия: Mallory #4
- Год: 1985
- Язык: английский
- Год: Walker
- ISBN: 978-0-8027-5629-9
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «A Shroud for Aquarius». Краткое содержание книги:
She grinned. “Who hasn’t? Say, why are you asking all these questions about Ginnie, and Dave?”
I poured the last of my Pabst bottle into my glass. “It’s not Dave, really. It’s Ginnie I’m interested in. I went to high school with her, and we were close. Drifted apart. Now she’s dead, and I’m trying to make some sense of it.”
She gave me a puzzled look; boy, her eyes were green. “That’s a funny sort of thing to do.”
“Is it?”
“It’s not unusual to mope around thinking about somebody after they die, and try and make sense out of it. But to go around asking people questions, like in Citizen Kane or something, that’s odd.”
I smiled a little. “You like old movies?”
She smiled a little back at me. “Sure.”
“Want to take one in some time, at the Bijou?”
“I go there all the time. Sometimes I take my daughter.”
“Oh, so you have a little girl.”
“Yeah. Seven years. I’m divorced.”
“Most single people our age are.”
“Are you?”
“I’m the exception that proves the rule.”
“I’ve never understood that expression. You’re a writer — why don’t you explain it to me?”
“I’ve never understood it either. That doesn’t stop me from using it, though.”
She sipped her glass of Coors. “You’re an odd duck. Maybe it’s because you’re a writer.”
“It’s because I’m a mystery writer, probably.”
“Trying to put puzzles together.”
“Yeah. Trying to make things make sense. Trying to make life tidy and neat.”
“Which it isn’t.”
“Which it isn’t. But trying, anyway. Do you know a guy named Sturms?”
“Sure,” she said, not looking at me. “He’s an insurance man.”
“Ever hear anything else about him?”
“Such as?”
“Such as, I don’t know. Just wondering.”
“No. He’s Dave’s insurance man, that’s all I know.”
“Really. Does he ever come to see Dave, at the office?”
“Sure. He was in this morning.”
Interesting.
“Like another beer, Shirl?”
“No. Thank you. This’ll do me.” She glanced at a round clock on the pine wall, surrounded by shrubbery. “It’s almost five. I have to pick my little girl up at the sitter’s in fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks for taking off early, so we could have this little chat.”
“It’s okay. Dave’s loose. Anytime after four, I can go if I need to, or just feel like it.”
“He sounds like a good boss.”
“He really is.”
I walked her from Amelia Earhart’s around the corner and a couple blocks down, to a parking ramp where her car was. Mine, too, actually.
On the way, I said, “You must be about my age — probably a little younger, though.”
“I’m thirty-three.”
“You’re a year younger than me. Can I ask you a question?”
With nice dry humor, she said, “It’s a little bit late to start asking me if you can ask questions, Mal, isn’t it?”
I put my arm in hers; she seemed to like it.
“You’re right,” I said. “But I wanted to get a little personal.”
“I’ve been sort of hoping you would.”
“What’s your attitude toward drugs? Recreational ones, I mean.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ve used some over the years. I may not look it today, prim and proper and all, but I did acid, once upon a time. Among other things.”
“And?”
“And I never had a single flashback, and I never sat and stared at the sun till I went blind, either.”
“Good for you. So, are you still into that, at all?”
“No. That’s kid stuff, don’t you think?”
“I do, actually. But a lot of people don’t.”
“I have a little girl of my own. I don’t have any of that stuff in my house. I see it at parties sometimes, but stay away from it, even there.”
“Why?”
We were at the parking ramp.
“I wasn’t a campus radical or anything,” she said. “But I’m the right age to remember what people said back then. What sort of changes they hoped to make. The Woodstock nation, give peace a chance, dawning of the age of Aquarius, all of it. And what became of it all? Look at Dave — he was a mover and shaker in those days, in those circles. And now he sells advertising. Oh, he does a great job at it, I’m all for it. But isn’t it funny how the only thing left from those days is the dope? The ideals, they’re all gone. But the dope is still here. And what good has ever come from it?”
I didn’t have an answer for her.
“Ginnie was part of that,” she said suddenly. “I didn’t know her but to speak to her, but she was part of that.”
“Part of what? Dope?”
“Yes.”
“She still used it?”
“Oh, probably. She used to be a dealer, everybody knows that.”
“Was she still?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. I’m just an outsider.”
“Shirl, if you know something, please tell me.”
“I don’t, really.”
“All right.” I let some air out, took her by both her hands, squeezed gently. “Thanks for having a beer with me. I’d like to see you again some time.”
“Even though you found out I have a little girl at home?”
I grinned at her. “If I didn’t go out with women who have kids at home, I’d have to restrict my dating to preteens. And I’m getting a little long in the tooth for that. I like women my own age.”
“Is that why you wear the Sgt. Bilko T-shirt?”
“What do you mean?”
“If a girl recognizes Bilko, then she’s old enough to date you, is that it?”
I laughed. “Subconsciously, that could be the reason. Never thought of it that way. Could I have your phone number?”
She got a little piece of paper out of her purse and wrote the number on it and gave it to me.
“Please call,” she said. “I like you, Mal.”
“I like you too, Shirl. And I bet I’ll like your kid, too. It, uh, may be a week or so before you hear from me.”
“You’re going to be asking around about Ginnie.”
“Yes.”
“Just ’cause you’re curious about what made her tick.”
“I’m curious about what made her stop ticking.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t you listen to me before? I said Ginnie was part of it, Mal.”
“Dope.”
“Yes, and where there’s dope, there’s fire.”
“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
“I didn’t want to tell you, but somebody’s got to. That man you mentioned. That insurance agent.”
“Sturms.”
“Him. He’s the biggest coke dealer around.”
“Is your boss involved with him...?”
“In dope? I don’t know, and I don’t care. As far as I know, he’s just Dave’s insurance agent. But I’ve lived in this town since I was in high school, and Sturms is a fixture. And Ginnie was tight with him.”
“That’s what I understand. And that strikes me as strange — after all, he’s an ex-preppie and Ginnie was an ex-hippie. What do they have to be friends about? Sturms doesn’t hit me as Ginnie’s cup of tea at all — herbal or otherwise.”
“Must not have been friendship, then.”
“What else, then?”
“What’s left? Business.” She walked toward the ramp, then glanced back at me, green eyes flashing. “I’d like to hear from you, when you get this out of your system.”
“You will, Shirl.”
When I got this out of my system.
8
The funeral home was on West Third, in the first block beyond the business district in a stately, pillared old house typical of those on West Hill. West Hill was, after all, where the mansions and near-mansions of Port City’s first millionaires and near-millionaires had roosted, looking down on the Mississippi River (and the rest of Port City). More recent generations of the very wealthy had, for the most part, departed West Hill for condominiums and split-levels, usually out of state, and some of the grand gothic dwellings of their forefathers weren’t maintained like they should. The home I was parking in front of was an exception, a soft-focus oasis in the night, basking in pastel lighting, looking much better than most of its neighbors, looking just like it had twenty, fifty, a hundred years ago, perfectly preserved, a masterpiece of embalming.