Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956
- Автор: Дил Борден, Томпсон Джим
- Год: 1956
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956». Краткое содержание книги:
Her fingers were cool against mine. She’s so pretty, I thought, so much prettier than any of those girls last night. I didn’t like to see her crying for me.
“But if I hadn’t gone,” I said, “look what might have happened. You know what Switch would have done to that girl.”
“I don’t care.” She sobbed. “I don’t care...”
She walked away from me, over to Mama. Antonio came up. All the time Rosa had been with me, he’d just hung back, watching.
“I hope you’re satisfied, Juan,” he said. “My cousin. My own cousin.”
I just stared at him.
“They’re holding Switch for trial,” he said. “I suppose you know that, don’t you, Juan?”
I shook my head. Besides, I thought, even if they were, it was a good thing. If you were bad, like Switch, you shouldn’t be left loose to hurt other people.
“We take you in,” Antonio said. “We give you a home. Because you’re family.” He spat on the floor. “A wetback rat, that’s what you are, butting in on things you don’t know anything about.”
His eyes weren’t Antonio’s eyes at all. They were ugly, as if he really hated me, as if he’d have killed me if he got the chance.
“You squealed,” he said. “You better be glad they’re deporting you, Juan. You better be glad they’re shipping you back to Mexico. Because if you stayed here, you wouldn’t live very long. You know that, don’t you?”
The only thing that meant anything to me, at the time he spoke to me, was what he’d said about them deporting me. I believed him. It was what I’d been sure would happen, ever since the police had caught me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble.”
He started to walk away, then swung around and came right up to the wire screen.
“The jacket,” he said. “You give it back, right now, you hear? Why’d I ever let you wear it, you—”
I took the jacket off. It made me feel real bad, not having it any more, even if it was faded and torn and with the new big slit in the elbow where Switch had cut it the night before.
“Just drop it on the floor,” my cousin said. “I want to be sure you don’t have it when they take you back.”
I let the jacket fall. I wanted to try to explain, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know the customs and besides, even if I had known them, maybe I still couldn’t have explained. It looked, now, as if Antonio would rather have let Switch have the girl. I couldn’t understand.
I looked over his head at Rosa. She had stopped crying and was standing very stiff, as if braced against tears. She waved to me when the guards came up and led me away.
“Adios, Juan,” she said.
Not, “hasta la vista... until we meet again...” but the formal, final good-bye.
“Adios, Rosa.”
She was gone when the truck with the bars in it picked us up, me and some other Mexicans who had come across the border for the harvest. The truck was headed for the border. It had no windows, but the guards let me go to the back and stare out through the heavy screens, at the freeway behind me and the great tall buildings and the city, sleepy now in the early morning, the great, beautiful city I knew I’d never see again.
A Bottle of Wine
by Borden Deal
“When Grace and I were married,” the judge explained to his wife’s lover as they sat imbibing the fine topaz liquid, “we felt that a touch of illicitness was desirable.” This sounds very sophisticated and placid, now doesn’t it? The truth of the matter is that one of these charming characters is about to have his head blown off...
The judge sat in a chair where he could see the door entering into the hall from outside. He was waiting. His wife had phoned fifteen minutes ago and he knew that in any minute up to the next ten he would see her again. He sat stiffly, rigidly, as though he were sitting behind his bench downtown, and his mind was as frozen and hard as his face.
The Judge was a big man. His heavy frame gave majesty to his grave demeanor and his craggy, lined face forbade human approach. His hair was white, not full-white but grizzled with the crow’s-wing black it had once been. It was not whiter than it had been the day he had married the woman he was waiting for now.
The house was silent around him. It was a two-story, white clap-boarded, set back from the street in old trees. It was comfortable and worn, like the chair he was sitting in, the upholstery faded, the cloth fringing over the round of wood at the sides. It was a house that had been here in this land for a long time for it had been built and furnished by his father, the old judge.
He heard the sound of a motor. He did not move, but there was a hardening in him. His mind followed the motor to a stop beside the house, listened to the click of heels on the porch, felt the unhesitating turn of the doorknob. I knew she would come back, he thought. I knew I would see: her one more time. Just once.
The door was open, then, and she was looking at him. “Hello, Judge,” she said.
He listened to her voice carefully. It was not strained. It was not her bright, careless voice either. It was just a carrier for the noncommittal words.
“Hello, Grace,” he said, wondering how his own voice sounded. He couldn’t tell. He watched for its effect in her face but he could see none. It wore the bright, varnished look she took to bridge parties and wives’ committees, as though her features, her expression, her eyes, had been sprayed with the fixing preparation she used on her hair.
Now at last, he thought, I know for a truth that you are a bitch. I’ve suspected it almost all the years of our marriage. But now I know. And a vain one, too... she couldn’t go away forever without all the expensive clothing in the closets upstairs. Vain and practical, torturing a man for a few bright rags of shaped cloth.
“I came to get my clothes,” she said, the voice still as neutral as sunshine. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Then you’re going,” he said. “You’re really going, after all.”
She moved toward him, put a foot on the first riser of the stair. “Of course,” she said. “You’ve known. You’ve known for a week now.” She stopped, watching him. Then she went on. “I’ll get them. It won’t take me long and then...”
“Your friend,” he said. “Where is he? Waiting in a motel somewhere?”
She did not stop this time. She dropped the neutral, emotionless words down the stairs almost carelessly. “He’s waiting in the car. I needed someone to help with the luggage.”
He was alone again now. I didn’t think she’d do that, he told himself painfully. He stood up, lifting the tail of the light linen coat he wore even in the summer heat, and took the .38 pistol from his hip pocket. He looked at it thoughtfully for a moment. Then he put it back into his hip pocket and walked to the door.
When he opened it the outside heat blasted at him, slapping him in the face like a hand. Even the big trees did not stop it. He thought of the sun baking on the concrete streets downtown and felt the sweat start on his forehead in tiny beads.
He went to the end of the porch and looked at the young man sitting in the car. The man’s face turned toward him in sudden startlement and The Judge saw clinically that he was very good-looking and probably younger than Grace. He walked down the steps and leaned on the window-rim of the car, looking in.
“I’m Grace’s husband,” he said unnecessarily. “You must be Wallace.”
He studied the wariness in the young, smooth face, waited patiently until it went away, until Wallace decided there was no danger of violence or harsh words. It must have taken some doing, The Judge thought, for him to come out here in the first place.