Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960
- Автор: Бучер Энтони, Хантер Эван
- Год: 1960
- Язык: английский
- Год: Pocket Books
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960». Краткое содержание книги:
5.
Because history, I suddenly realized, was now repeating itself. This was essentially the same scene with which all the trouble had started. Same girl, Robbie; same dance; same guy, me; same lousy intruder, Spade. Except that it then had been on the beach and was now in a theater, all of the original elements were again present — only, like a big flea with small cats on it, the positions were reversed.
Then it had been Spade who ruined everything for me — and maybe for Robbie. Now, with Robbie’s marvelous help, I was going to ruin everything for Spade. It seemed a thing of beauty, almost poetic: Justice!
I almost smiled as Spade’s eyes wobbled toward me and then snapped back toward the stage. In a kind of starchy tone, stiff and yet gummy, he said: “Do you see what I see?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t see anything.”
It was a hot flash of inspiration. Logic would tell him this couldn’t be happening. If I agreed with logic, he might get completely unstrung. “But — that music,” he said.
“What music?”
He twitched. “Don’t you hear the music? Don’t you hear the music?”
“What music?”
“Something is cuckoo.”
“Spade,” I said, “you are getting all pale, Spade.”
On the stage, plenty of movement.
Just high-heeled shoes and pink pants now. And Robbie’s hands were at the top of the pink, diddling and dawdling as she had diddled and dawdled that grand afternoon at the beach. I remembered how that sight had transfixed me, riveted my entire attention even while murder had flickered in the corner of my eye. I took a deep breath, squeezed the fingers of my right hand together.
“She’s there!” Spade cried. “Hear the music?”
“Spade, you’re getting awfully pale.”
I guess at this point he didn’t care if he turned purple. Spade hadn’t forgotten me completely, but I was growing less important by the minute. It was inevitable. Robbie’s fourth dimension had practically zoomed into the fifth, and now she was approaching the most climactic climax this stage — maybe any stage — had ever experienced.
Down slipped the pink, then it was a pink blur in her hand, and a moment later flying through the air. Spade’s jaw sagged two more inches.
Robbie gyrated, wound up. The music was screeching to a nerve-shattering peak of wildness. Any second it was going to happen. It was, I knew, going to be memorable, marvelous. Something had happened to Robbie up there. She knew she had an audience, she was on stage, doing the thing she’d always wanted to do, and it was as though slow lightning flowed through her. She was getting rid of those repressions and suppressed desires all at once, flinging them every which way, and she had in these moments risen to peaks of magnificence even she might never reach again.
And, as I moved toward Spade, a kind of hot sadness wallowed all over me. I’d missed her three masterpieces on the beach, and now I was going to miss the grandest one of all. But it was sure doing the trick. I pulled my eyes from Robbie and looked at Spade, stepped toward him. Spade didn’t know I was there. He didn’t know he was there. All he knew was that Robbie was there.
He was bent slightly forward, stretched taut like a bowstring and sort of tilted toward the stage, his eyes stretched wide and protruding just a little. His mouth flopped open completely and his gun wavered a full six inches. I planted my feet solidly, hauled back my right arm, wound my fingers into a fist like a gob of cement, and started to launch the blow.
I must have started to launch at the same split second as Robbie started to launch. The music had risen to its crashing crescendo as if the musicians were all busting their lungs. My fist whistled through the air, past my ear, on toward Spade’s chops. In that last grand, climactic moment he was transfixed in a kind of rapture. Timed to perfection, the music, Robbie’s masterpiece, my fist, and Spade’s transfixed expression all blended into a moment of explosive completeness — POW!
Spade had completely, entirely, absolutely forgotten about me. His concentration had been totally on Robbie’s masterpiece, it was his entire area of being, his all, and that sudden POW! must have been the most shocking thing that had ever, ever happened to him. He must have thought the impossible had happened and it had catapulted through space and smacked him. Maybe she was there, maybe she wasn’t there, but something had sure walloped him a good one.
He didn’t go out immediately, there was a delayed reaction of perhaps two or three seconds, as if he were by sheer force of will and Gargantuan desire hanging on in defiance of man and nature. He twirled around, slammed back against the edge of a seat, and there was for a moment on his chops the most stunned and perplexed expression imaginable, a kind of stupefied disbelief blending with petrified contentment.
Then his eyes suddenly looked artificial, his face went blank, and he flopped to the floor.
As he fell, his gun went off. Either he’d convulsively squeezed the trigger, or the impact had fired the gun, but it made a great crash.
I bent over and grabbed the revolver, straightened up as a door# slammed. Feet pounded, getting closer. On the stage Robbie looked toward the entrance of the theater and let out a squeal, hopped four inches up in the air, spun around, and grabbed her clothes, ran off stage. I got a glimpse. Again.
That’s all. Just a glimpse. It seemed as if that was all I ever got. Bodies falling, squinty-eyed doctors, safecrackers interrupting everything, doors slamming. I was beginning to get pretty sour about it.
A uniformed policeman ran up. I briefed him quickly, wound it up: “This is the character who did it,” and started backstage. Then I stopped, turned to the officer, and said: “Incidentally, when he comes to, don’t believe everything he tells you. Some of it may sound strange. We — I hit him pretty hard.”
He bent down by Spade. I trotted backstage. Robbie was practically dressed, just zipping up her skirt. As she slipped on her blouse I told her she was marvelous, she’d saved the day, but what in hell had ever possessed her to do it?
“First, I just got away,” she said rapidly, a throb of excitement in her voice, “went backstage and hid there. I was scared, that was all I could think of. But then I started worrying about you — then I heard you both talking. I looked, saw you both walking up the aisle, and he was pointing a gun at you. I almost died!”
She paused, eyes wide. “Yes,” I said, really interested now. “Go on, go on.”
“I knew I had to do something, but I thought: What can I do? What can I do? I’m only a woman, only a woman... And suddenly it came to me. I couldn’t help myself. Something moved me.”
“It sure moved you in the right directions,” I said.
“Actually, there wasn’t time to think about it.” She chuckled suddenly. “I always wanted to — to, you know — anyway. And all of a sudden I was doing it.” She sighed. “It was as if my cocoon dropped away, as if something told me.”
Her face was flushed, she looked ecstatic.
She sighed again. “I knew if I could get his attention, you’d do something clever.”
“Not so clever. All I did was sock him.”
“That was clever. Anyway, I knew you’d do something. And I thought I knew how to get his attention.”
“You sure did. You petrified it. And it was wonderful. Probably saved my life.”
“Oh, that,” she said, as if it were nothing. “But how was I? How was my dancing?”