Chinaman’s Chance
- Автор: Томас Росс
- Серия: Arthur Case Wu #1
- Год: 1978
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon & Schuster
- ISBN: 978-0-671-24070-7
- Жанр: Политические детективы
Электронная книга - «Chinaman’s Chance». Краткое содержание книги:
James seemed almost embarrassed, but not quite, “The R Street Fudge and Philosophical Society,” he said, and then glared at the two men defiantly.
Artie Wu grinned cheerfully. “Cute, like I said.”
“How many are there, a couple of dozen of you?” Durant said.
“Approximately.”
Durant started putting out his cigarette. “And how many of you are ex-Cabinet members. A dozen, fifteen?”
“All of us have served in government in one capacity or other.”
Durant nodded. “And all of you are millionaires or better. Much better.”
“A number of us are comfortably fixed,” James said a little stiffly, trying to make it neither a boast nor a confession.
“And used to it,” Wu said.
There was no warmth in James’s look. “To a comfortable living?”
Wu shook his head. “To running things. Let me put it another way. If a pot starts to boil somewhere, you guys are right there with a lid.”
James sighed. “You overestimate both our scope and our influence, Arthur.”
Wu smiled. “Do I?”
“I’m afraid so. We have limited resources, far more limited than you think. And for purposes of security we decided that this particular project had to be self-financing. I made that clear in Aberdeen.”
“What you made clear in Aberdeen,” Wu said, “was that if anything went wrong in Pelican Bay, your R Street bunch would come out with hands so clean that they’d be almost antiseptic.”
“You’re not complaining about the financial arrangements, are you, Arthur?”
Wu shook his head. “No. You found us a quick buyer for the chili parlor, and then we took what we got and went short on Midwest Minerals, the way you advised, and we made ourselves a bunch of money. I’m not complaining about that. It’s just that my teeth hurt whenever you start talking poor-mouth.”
James smiled another of his bleak and chilly smiles. “I’ll try to be less parsimonious in my future remarks. In any event, after selling your — uh — establishment in Aberdeen — what was it you called it? The Something Chili Parlor.”
“The Nacogdoches Chili Parlor,” Durant said.
“Yes, to be sure. Interesting name.”
“My wife thought it up,” Wu said. “She likes American names.”
“And how is that splendid woman?”
“Okay, except that she loathes California.”
“She rises even higher in my estimation. But to continue. After leaving Aberdeen, you gathered up kith and kin and came to Washington, where we three met several times and devised a general strategy. It was about then, of course, that the Congressman was killed out here, which presented us with an alternative avenue of approach in the form of Randall Piers and through him to his sister-in-law. Silk Armitage. Are we still of the opinion that she could be the key?”
“It depends on what she’s got,” Durant said.
“Well, we’re pretty sure of what the Congressman had,” James said. “After all, he had been a policeman and, from what I understand, a very good one. What a pity that his wife killed him.”
“Maybe she didn’t,” Durant said.
A new layer of frost settled over James’s face. “Well, now,” he said. “That little bit of information might’ve been included in one of those reports that you didn’t send me.”
“We only learned about it yesterday,” Durant said, and looked at Wu. “Or was it the day before?”
“Yesterday.”
“I see,” James said. “Perhaps you gentlemen should continue the review — from when you left Washington until now. Provided, of course, that there is something to review other than a general description of life at the beach.”
“Okay,” Durant said, and lit another cigarette. “We went to San Francisco first. You know that, of course. We went there because we knew some people there who knew who was in L.A. and who wasn’t. By that I mean who was down here that we might use. After that I came down to L.A. first. Since Randall Piers and I don’t travel in the same circles, the problem was how to make the approach without letting him know that he was being approached. I decided on proximity. Then I had some luck and found the house on the beach.”
“You sent me a postcard of that, I believe,” James said, “with something like ‘Keeping busy, having fun’ on it. Oh, yes, and your address and phone number, too.”
“See, we did keep in touch,” Wu said.
“Okay. After I found the house,” Durant went on, “Artie came down and got settled in Santa Monica. Then using the information you gave us we looked up Eddie McBride and opened what he thought were negotiations.”
“He thought the money was still there, I take it?” James said.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t disabuse him of that notion?”
“No,” Durant said, shaking his head. “Well, after we established proximity to Piers, the next thing was to create familiarity. Piers walks his dogs nearly every day along the beach, so Artie started jogging along the beach.”
James’s silver eyebrows went up. “I thought you hated exercise, Arthur.”
“I do. I especially hate it right after dawn, which is when Piers walks his dogs.”
“What kind of dogs?”
“Greyhounds,” Durant said. “Six of them.”
“Six?”
“Six.”
“My word. But why did you decide that Arthur should do the jogging? Why not you, Quincy? After all, it was your house.”
“I’m more exotic,” Wu said.
“Yes. Yes, I see.”
“It was part of the whole mystique,” Durant said. “The come-on. Finally, when we decided that Piers was ripe, we had to set up the accidental meeting.”
“That’s when we went looking for a dead pelican,” Wu said.
“There really was a dead pelican?”
“Sure,” Wu said. “I needed something to trip over.”
“To be sure,” James said, murmuring the words, not even bothering to hide his disbelief.
“Dead pelicans are hard to find, by the way,” Wu said. “But we finally found one down at Zuma Beach, and I planted it the next morning. Then when Piers came along I tripped over it and sprained my ankle. I mean. I really sprained it.”
“It wasn’t a sprain,” Durant said. “It was a mild twist.”
“It felt like a sprain.”
“And Piers came to your rescue?” James said.
Artie Wu nodded. “He helped me into the house. We’d really worked to give it the right atmosphere. The furniture was all very good stuff, but just a little worn. We even rented a twenty-thousand-dollar Oriental rug and put it on the floor. Also, Quincy here kept his shirt off so that Piers could get a good look at his scars. And finally, over in a corner, we had the Reuters financial ticker clacking away.”
“A nice touch,” James said. “Very nice indeed. And?”
“He nibbled at first, and then he bit,” Wu said. “We used MidMin to let him know how smart we were. Then we brought up Eddie McBride and his two million — just mentioning it, of course; a throwaway almost, certainly not a sell. And there you have it — a house on the beach with a twenty-thousand-dollar Oriental rug on the floor, a wall of books, a news ticker in the corner, and a fat Chinaman and his mysterious, scar-backed partner getting rich by riding the wire. Not to mention a map of where a stolen two million bucks might be buried. Now, if you had a missing sister-in-law and needed a couple of hard cases to find her and ran across us at six-thirty in the morning, what would you think?”
“That I’d stumbled across a nest of brigands,” James said.
“Exactly,” Artie Wu said, and smiled.
Chapter 17
Whittaker Lowell James was an expert listener. As Durant and Wu talked, James sat quietly in his chair, moving almost nothing but his eyes except when he occasionally sipped cold coffee from his cup.