Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951
- Автор: Кристи Агата, Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Год: 1951
- Язык: английский
- Год: Mercury Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951». Краткое содержание книги:
Soney sneered. “1929, hunh? So I was right. You sure your old man just died? He didn’t decide to jump out the window? How about that, Parker Amhurst, the second?”
I sat there eating, and took it. And I watched the way the light from the unshaded bulb above her head made gold glints in her hair. And I knew right then I’d be taking her stuff for a long time. If I could just be around her and watch her hair under an unshaded light bulb...
She sauntered off through the swinging door in the back, while I finished eating. The cashier was taking my money when Soney came back, wearing a fringed leather jacket over the levis and plaid shirt and boots she had been wearing that first night in The Triple T.
Walking close to me so that we touched, she looked up and said, “You wanta date me?”
“Naturally,” I said. “When?”
“What do you mean when?” she said. “I wanta date, I want it right now. You got your car here?”
“Right outside,” I said, and I took her arm in the fringed leather jacket. And we were off. To The Triple T and to other joints.
Soney lived in a furnished room in the boarding-house area. Alone. She liked it okay, she said. Because it only cost her three dollars a week. Which was too much for a working gal who made fifteen dollars a week and few tips. In 1948. But some mornings she didn’t feel like going to work, she said, and Joe Photopolus who owned Joe’s Lunch didn’t care. She got along — barely. She liked her beer, but there were always guys that would buy that. Like me.
On the walls of her room she had pasted pictures of horses and guys in western clothes. And Soney on horses. And one photochrome from a magazine showing an Arizona ranch with purple mountains in the distance.
I lit cigarettes for us and said, “That picture of the ranch. I wish you’d take it down. It breaks my heart. Being here.”
Soney’s voice had softened. “What’s it like out there, Park — I mean, what’s it really like? Is it like in that picture and like it is in the movies? Is it really so wonderful?”
“Even better than that,” I said. “You can’t take a picture of a western night on the desert or in the canyon with the stars close, like they are. And a camp fire. You can’t photograph magic. Thinking about it makes you want to cry, when you’re here in this jerk town and can’t leave.”
“Why can’t you go back, Park? You make good money, you’ve got a college education. You could go out there if you really wanted to. God, what I wouldn’t do to be able to! But I couldn’t even pay the bus fare.”
“A man can’t make a living out there,” I said, “unless he’s inside looking out. Too many people have the same idea. Labor’s cheap. I’ve got a good job here — with a future. I’d be silly to leave it and go back there to starve. Never again — until I’m in the money. And that will probably be a long time.”
“Money, Park. Money money money. I’ve never been able to do anything I wanted to because of that stuff. Let’s you and I rob a bank and get enough to blow this town. And its smog and its stinking rooms like this. And let’s us go out west and buy a ranch. And horses. Like I’ve always wanted.”
“Sure, honey,” I said, “we’ll get ourselves fifty thousand and buy a ranch. But in Mexico. It’s much better. Land’s cheaper — so’s labor. You could live like a king forever on fifty thousand. Let’s rob a bank. You and I.”
And then Soney wanted to know about Mexico. So I told her about the border towns I’d been in. Nogales and Jaurez and Tiajuana. And the time I went down to Acapulco. And Monterey. The bright sun. The tacos. The little ninos who tag along behind you, and how you feel funny because they make you feel so important. And how they really talk like they do in “Gordo” — pronounced “Gortho.”
“Let’s rob a bank, darling,” she said, and kissed me...
When I checked with the office the next day, just before noon, there was a number for me to call. It was The Triple T — so I asked for Soney. She wanted me to come on over quick; she had big news.
She was seated by herself in a booth and she wasn’t wearing her levis. She had on a dress and she looked swell. She had a package on the seat beside her and as soon as I sat down and ordered, she had it open. It was a slate-gray uniform.
“See that, Park,” she said. “I’m an elevator operator now.” Then she smiled — big. “In the Plaza Trust, no less. Plush, hunh?”
I didn’t know what to say. She seemed so pleased with herself. And just because of landing a job as an elevator operator. Maybe thirty bucks a week. It made me swallow. Then I said:
“Congratulations. You should look neat in that uniform. Really neat.”
Her mouth twisted in that crooked, wry smile she had, and she said, “You fool. You stupid fool! You really think I’m simple, don’t you? You really think a punk job like that seems like big stuff to me? Well, it doesn’t! I think it stinks.”
“But—” I didn’t know what to say.
“Get smart, honey,” she said. “This is it. It’s our chance to really do it. To work our plan.”
Then I was really confused. “What plan?” I said.
“To rob a bank, silly,” she said. “Listen!”
Like a fool — like the stupid fool she called me — I did. I sat there and listened while she told me how we were going to do it. How we were going to Mexico and live like kings. Knowing she was no good and no good for me. Knowing it was all crazy — yet I sat there and listened. And the darndest part was, she made it sound plausible.
Two days later I fumbled a big deal. Intentionally. I lost my temper and told a purchasing agent where he could go. He called up the boss and read me off, and that was that. I was fired.
Oh, I made it sound good. I pleaded and protested that I’d been feeling sick, and promised that it would never happen again. But that was that. I was fired. And our plan had started.
On the top floor of the Plaza Trust there’s a suite of offices. They’re occupied by the Briney Armored Car Service. Up there they handle big sums of cold cash. Cold cash in small bills that aren’t marked.
The next day I walked over to the Plaza Trust. I rode up on the elevator Soney was running, but I didn’t speak to her or even look at her. She didn’t look at me. There were other people on the car.
I asked the personnel manager at the Briney Armored Car Service for a job. There was one open — as a guard. Soney had promised that. She’d known it even before she took the elevator job. From dating one of the Briney employees.
The personnel man couldn’t understand why I wanted that kind of job — when I’d been making twice as much. I gave him a long story about how I got fired. About being in the infantry and how I missed the excitement — handling guns. That stuff.
He swallowed it, I guess. Anyway, I filled out a couple miles of forms.
Three days later I got a call to report for work. I figured the references had done it. Plenty of influential people had known my father, and known me — a little. At least they recognized my name.
I was given a uniform and a gun. A side arm. And Soney’s plan was beginning to work.
A reasonable amount of time had to pass. Two months, at least. They were hard. Soney wouldn’t let anybody see us together.
I couldn’t go to her place any more, or even to The Triple T. People might remember. And I couldn’t call her at her rooming house because the phone was in the hall and there was always the chance she’d be overheard.
So to perfect our plans for the big day, I’d drive out to the end of the bus line and park on a darkened street, and Soney would ride out to the end of the line and walk two blocks to the car. And we’d change the location of the meeting place every night or so, just in case.