The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories
- Автор: Пауэлл Тэлмидж
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Developers have swarmed onto countless other Gulf Coast islands, bulldozing the jungle, pumping, dredging, filling, spreading lawns and domestic palms, laying out streets, marinas, golf courses, sites for homes, schools, and expensive condominiums. Dedicated to the Beautiful Life, these islands also have much in common.
The one I’m talking about, however, is used for a purpose that makes it unique among all islands.
I first viewed the Island from a low-flying helicopter on a hot, sultry day. It looked so peaceful and inviting, swimming toward us on a blue-green, sparkling Gulf. In shape, it was a finger lying on the serene sea, four or five miles long and a couple of miles wide.
The northern end had been plushly prepared for people. Amid acres of lawn and tropical gardens, a modernistic home of glass and redwood threw its three large, adjacent wings into the sunshine. The lawn sloped to a snowy white beach and marina where a seaworthy cruiser and a small schooner with furled sails bobbed.
South of the house were spread the huge kidney-shaped swimming pool, doubles tennis courts, a landing strip with parked Cessna, and, tucked to one side, a couple of small cement-block buildings that I guessed housed the pumps, generators and other necessities to keep the estate going.
The man-made paradise occupied only the northern quarter of the Island. Less than a mile south of the house the jungle crouched, a thick green tangle creating its own twilight; timeless and self-renewing, it seemed to brood with endless patience, awaiting the time when it would reclaim the small part that people had carved from it. LaFarge, the sheriff, was flying the chopper, and so far he’d merely grunted every time I asked him where he was taking me and why.
Conscious of the weight of the handcuffs about my wrists, I studied his swarthy, big-boned, cruel profile. A flicker in his dark, heavy-browed eyes and gathering of muscle tension in his bullish body warned me that the Island was our destination.
LaFarge’s town, Ogathalla, was an unimportant dot on the map, a crossroads cluster of weathered buildings in piney woods country, little more than a posted speed limit and main street traffic light to halt the big Kawasaki I was riding cross-country.
Before the light changed, a dusty red-and-white cruiser with constabulary markings and blue-flashing blinker quartered in front of the cycle. The big, indistinct image behind the steering wheel leaned in my direction and thumbed me toward the curb.
Obediently, I walked the wheels over, straddling the seat. The man I was to know as LaFarge got out of the cruiser and padded toward me. He studied me closely, my rather skinny face and denim-clothed frame, the curl of sandy hair below the crash helmet, the eyes behind light amber glasses, the leather-strap sandals on dusty bare feet, the blanket roll secured behind the cycle’s seat. “What’s your name, jimbo?”
“Rogers, Officer.”
“Where you headed?”
“Down the coast.”
“Where down the coast, jimbo?”
“Tampa, maybe. Sarasota. Fort Myers. Just someplace to work and spend the winter in the sun.”
“Where you from?”
“El Paso,” I said.
“Before that?”
“Phoenix. L.A. Vegas.”
“You got people?” he asked, his dark, intent eyes making the question important
“People?”
“Kinfolk,” he snapped. “Someone who can vouch for you.”
I slipped off the riding glasses and looked at him, frowning. “Why do I need someone to vouch for me?”
“The welcome mat ain’t out for motorcycle bums in Ogathalla, jimbo.”
“I’m not exactly a motorcycle bum, Officer. I’ve got money. I pay my way.”
He kicked the front tire almost gently with his toe. “Just rambling around, seeing the country, enjoying your freedom, working when you have to?”
“Something like that.” But it went deeper. It went back to hard questions that crystallized in my mind about the time I was one of the last of the soldier boys debarking from Vietnam. Simply framed questions without ready answers... who I am... where is truth among the falsehoods... what this business of living is all about... what to do with my life...
I was trying to settle a lot of things in my mind, but I doubted that the thug in uniform would understand, even if he were interested So I said, “You’ve summed it up exactly, Officer.”
“We’ll see. We’ll sure look into you.” He moved with a short side step. “Now get off the wheels, jimbo. Our local pokey is just a short walk down the street”
I stood in dumb surprise. The look on my face gave him a short laugh. “Busting the speed limit as you rolled into town will do for a starter,” he said. “You want to add a charge of resisting arrest?” The urge flared in me to flatten him and kick the Kawa to life. He read it in my eyes and dropped his hand to his gun. “Do it,” he invited softly. “I step on your kind, with my heel. Do it — and I’ll take you before the others even have a chance.”
His reference to the others made no more sense than the rest of the situation, but I sensed clearly his sadism, and I hadn’t survived to this point in time to give a prehistoric sheriff quick excuses to get his kicks.
The rest of the day was spent in a six-by-eight cell in the Ogathalla jail. The cells next to me in the decrepit old building were empty, leaving me suspended in sweltering heat and the aftersmells of ten thousand previous tenants.
I wasn’t yet in the grip of real gut-fear. I figured LaFarge for a bored bully shoring up his tough, big-man self-image. He’d picked me up on a pretext, but he could only go so far. This was still the U.S. of A.
I couldn’t see any other angle. I came from nowhere, was going nowhere. I had traveling bread; enough, I hoped, to satisfy LaFarge and a crooked magistrate in a kangaroo court.
I finally slept in a pool of soured sweat and the stink of the lumpy bunk.
After daybreak the next morning LaFarge came to the cell, grinned at me through the barred door, and slipped a tin plate through the slot at the bottom of the door. “Breakfast, Rogers.”
I gripped the bars, white-knuckled. “I want a lawyer.”
“Jimbo,” he drawled, “you’re old enough for your druthers not to hurt you. Relax and enjoy Ogathalla hospitality while you can.”
He didn’t seem to mind the things I yelled at him as he went away. He returned in late afternoon with another tin plate of swill. After the vacuity of the day the sound of any other human footstep was welcome — almost. “Can’t we be reasonable, Sheriff?” I asked, ignoring the food.
“Sure. I’m the most reasonable man in the county.”
“Then what’s the charge against me?”
“Ain’t decided yet, jimbo. I’m looking into you like you never been looked into before. I may be a hick sheriff, but I got a long-distance phone and a badge and a title, and before I’m through I can tell you if you’ve ever spit on Times Square.”
I didn’t have anything to say for a moment, and while I stood there looking at him through the space between the bars the first worms began crawling through my guts.
“Sheriff,” I said, wetting my lips, “I do have some rights.”
“Here, jimbo? Who says?”
“You can’t keep me here forever.”
“Who says? You got anybody to come fetch you out?”
The sun gradually slipped off in its habitual way, and nightfall came as a heavy and unwelcome shadow. The questions that had bothered me for so many months had a particular sharpness there in the darkness of LaFarge’s jail, but I wouldn’t let myself think too hard about anything, including the hours ahead and the idea of LaFarge having the last word.