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:
Betty Mae Minklawn had almost reached the Tex-Mex bar when her resolution evaporated. She had grimly resolved — sworn, really — that she wouldn’t tell anyone about Silk Armitage’s being Madame Szabo and all. But the excitement of her morning’s adventure had been too much and now she had to tell someone or burst. Well, she would tell Madge Perkinson and that was all. And she’d make Madge swear not to tell anyone else. She’d make her swear it on a Bible. Betty Mae crossed the street and hurried into the Tex-Mex wondering if Madge still kept a Bible in the place.
The older man in the black Plymouth that was parked across the street stirred and fished an unfiltered Camel out of his shirt pocket. He lit it with a paper match and blew the smoke out the open window.
“Well?” he said.
The other man, who was behind the wheel of the car, yawned and stretched. “Somebody’s going to have to get inside.”
The older man thought about that for a moment. Then he said, “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What else?”
The older man rubbed his big nose. “Maybe if we squeeze a little, she’ll scoot.”
The other man nodded. “Yeah, that’d be good, wouldn’t it?”
“Good?” the older man said. “I don’t know if it’d be good. All I know is that it’d be better than the fuck-all we got now, which is nothing but an anonymous tip from somebody who doesn’t seem to like the way she tells fortunes. I don’t much like to count on people who go to fortune-tellers. Most of them are whackos.” He brooded about it for a moment and then said, “Let’s go find a phone.”
The other man straightened up and turned the key to start the engine. “How you gonna work the squeeze?” he said, and pulled the car out into Breadstone Avenue.
“You don’t seem to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“The problem’s not how we’re gonna do it. The problem’s if we’re gonna do it. And since I’m just the chief of police and you’re just a pissant homicide lieutenant, then it oughta be clear to you by now that we don’t make important decisions like this. This is a very delicate situation, in case you haven’t noticed. Very delicate. I mean, a situation like this calls for a lotta thought and study. You and me, Lake, we come across something like this and we’re liable to just go ahead and, you know, do it. Just like we’d take a shit or get a haircut. I mean, you don’t think about that too much either. But this. Well, this has probably gotta have what they call a feasibility study.”
“You’re letting ’em get to you, Oscar.”
The big man, whose name was Oscar Ploughman and who was Pelican Bay’s chief of police, smiled briefly, exposing his square yellow teeth that seemed too large for his small mouth. It was a bitter, sardonic smile that seemed to be Ploughman’s response to some awful private joke.
“I’d sort of appreciate it if you’d call me Chief Ploughman, Lake. Just because we’ve known each other for fourteen, maybe fifteen years and even used to chew on the same pussy sometimes, that’s no reason why we can’t have a touch of formality. They’re awful big on formality in this town, in case you haven’t noticed. Awful big. So maybe you oughta try calling me Chief Ploughman. Start out with once or twice a day and then sort of work up to it. I don’t want you to go into shock or anything.”
“Go fuck yourself, Chief Ploughman,” Lt. Marion Lake of Homicide said.
Ploughman flashed his bitter yellow smile again. “That’s better, Lake,” he said. “Much better.”
They found an outside phone booth at the corner of Wyoming and Thirty-third. Ploughman got out and went into the booth. He was so big that he had trouble closing the door until he turned and pressed himself back against the opposite wall. He dropped the dime and dialed, and when his ring was answered, he said, “This is Chief Ploughman. Lemme talk to Mr. Simms.”
He waited until Reginald Simms came on to the phone. “I think I might have something,” Ploughman said.
He listened for a moment, and then he said, “That’s why I wanted to check with you.” He listened again, and before responding he let his bitter smile come and go. “Well, maybe if I used the siren, I could make it in five minutes.” The grin came back and stayed in place while Ploughman listened to Simms’s response. “No, sir, I’m not really going to use the siren. It was just a joke, sir. A very, very small joke. Tiny, almost.” The smile went away as Ploughman listened to Simms. “Yes, I think I can make it by then... No, sir. No siren.”
After he got back into the car Ploughman said, “One thing you gotta say about Mr. Simms, Lake.”
“What?”
“He’s got this terrific sense of humor. I mean, he’s nothing but giggles and chuckles and ho-ho-ho. A regular Jolly Green Giant.”
“You’re letting ’em get to you, Oscar.”
“You think so, huh?”
“Yeah, you’re getting like you got back in Jersey when the DA started dumping on you. All mean and sarcastic, and then you start switching that nasty smile on and off, which sorta makes you look like a caution light.”
Ploughman rubbed his teeth with a forefinger and then twisted the rearview mirror around so he could examine the results.
“Irium,” he said.
“Who’s she?”
“It’s not a she, it’s an it.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“You’re not all that young,” Ploughman said. “They used to put it in Pepsodent. Don’t you remember? ‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.’ ” Ploughman sang the jingle in a harsh bass voice.
“I don’t remember that.”
“They put Irium in Pepsodent. It was a magic ingredient that some guys in this advertising agency dreamed up. Of course, it wasn’t no magic ingredient. It was just the same shit they put in all toothpaste. Pumice or whatever. But they needed a three-syllable word that sounded kinda scientific, so these guys came up with Irium and everybody rushed out to buy it.”
“I don’t remember that,” Lake said.
“It happened back in the ’40s. Things were better back then. I was younger. And a hell of a lot smarter.”
Lake shook his head and twisted the rearview mirror back into place. “You’re letting ’em get to you, Oscar.”
Ploughman flashed his yellow grin on and off once more, and then all the way down to the Plaza del Mar Towers he sang over and over again, “ ‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.’ ”
The Plaza del Mar Towers was a symbol of what some thought of as Pelican Bay’s civic schizophrenia. It was located on the beach side of Seashore Drive just across the street from what at one time had been the heart of the city’s downtown section. The section was still there and it was still downtown, but in a typical one-block stretch there were two vacant department stores, two empty jewelry stores, a vacant specialty shop or two, and a large motion-picture theater that advertised CLOSED on its marquee. The block was not much different from the rest of downtown Pelican Bay. A few businesses with a slippery look to them and EASY CREDIT signs had moved into some of the vacated stores. A couple of older, established businesses still hung on glumly, either too tired or too despondent to move on or give up. Only the banks still seemed solid and imperturbable.
To get to the Plaza del Mar Towers, Lt. Lake had to circle around Freddie, the twenty-one-foot-tall concrete pelican that had been built by the WPA back in 1937. Nobody could remember how he had come to be called Freddie, but that was his name now, and often people would say, “I’ll meet you by Freddie at noon.” At one time Freddie had had a clear view of the bay, but that was before the Plaza del Mar Towers had gone up a year ago.