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:
The Towers were actually only one tower, which was perfectly round and twenty stories high and built mostly of tinted glass and as little steel as possible. It was an apartment building with suspect financing that had gone up as the downtown business section had declined. The apartments on the ocean side cost more, of course, than did the ones that had downtown Pelican Bay and Freddie to look at. And the higher the apartment the higher the rent until you reached the twentieth floor, where an apartment on the ocean side topped out at $2,000 a month. There was only one such apartment, however, and in it lived Reginald Simms.
Freddie was now the last pelican in Pelican Bay, and he sat, or rather stood, in a little round park in the middle of the intersection. The park had a few benches and some grass, and it was a good place to meet people or just to sit and watch the traffic. The real pelicans had disappeared from Pelican Bay some years ago, killed off by the DDT that ran down from the farms into the rivers and then into the sea. The DDT had done something to the shells of the pelicans’ eggs — made them too soft, some said — and so there were no more pelicans in Pelican Bay, even though DDT had since been banned. There were no more pelicans, that is, except Freddie.
“Hello, Freddie,” Ploughman said as Lt. Lake drove around the concrete bird and then turned right into the curved drive that led up to the entrance of the Plaza del Mar Towers.
Chapter 20
From a professional standpoint, Ploughman had to admire the Plaza del Mar’s security setup. Although the uniformed doorman who admitted him didn’t look like much. Ploughman knew that he was a retired street-smart Pelican Bay policeman whose suspicious sixty-year-old eyes were almost as good as an electric scanner.
But if trouble somehow got past the old ex-cop, its next hurdle was the reception desk, which was manned by a retired thirty-nine-year-old former CID major who wore a carefully concealed .38 Chief’s Special on his left hip. Ploughman knew that the gun was there because he had signed the permit for it. And he knew that it was the ex-major’s left hip because he had once watched him fire it at the indoor police range and the ex-major had fired left-handed and hit what he aimed at.
Behind the reception area was another room which, Ploughman remembered, contained a bank of closed-circuit television receivers that poked and pried into almost every exposed nook and cranny of the building twenty-four hours a day. Of course, in a round building there weren’t too many nooks and crannies; in fact, hardly any at all except down in the underground garage. Even so, the closed-circuit television setup was constantly monitored, which added considerably to the rents of the Plaza del Mar tenants, who seemed quite content to sacrifice privacy for security.
Although the ex-major knew perfectly well who Ploughman was, he still very politely asked the police chief to wait while he called upstairs to make sure that Mr. Simms was really expecting him. As Ploughman waited, he inspected the rather flashily decorated lobby, which had a lot of low, comfortable-looking chairs and couches that nobody ever seemed to sit in.
Once cleared, Ploughman took the high-speed elevator up to the twentieth floor and moved down the curving hall until he reached Penthouse B. He rang the bell, and the door was opened by a reserved black man in a white mess jacket, who ushered Ploughman down a tiled hall that was covered with Oriental throw rugs. The hall led into the living room.
Penthouse B was shaped like a wedge of pie with its first bite already gone, and the living room ran along about three-fourths of the pie’s outer crust, where all the glass was. It was a large, strangely subdued room, almost sparsely furnished with good, but undemanding pieces. There were only two paintings, both mild abstracts, and Ploughman dimly perceived that the room had been carefully decorated so that nothing would detract from its magnificent view.
There was blue ocean to look at, miles and miles of it, and to the right was the curving coastline that was edged in lace when the waves came in. Ploughman was staring out the window when the voice behind him said, “Rather spectacular, isn’t it?”
Ploughman turned to find Reginald Simms standing by a small wet bar across the room.
“Yeah,” Ploughman said. “That’s what I was thinking. Hell of a view.”
“Would you care for a drink, Chief?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Simms turned to the bar. “Let’s see — you’re a gin drinker, I believe.”
“That’s right. Gin.”
“Nothing with it, right?”
“Nothing.”
Ploughman watched as Simms made the drinks. Simms wore a soft tweed jacket of grayish blue, dark gray slacks, black loafers that were carefully underpolished, and a shirt that was too pale to be cream and whose open collar was filled by a paisley scarf. Fred Astaire, Ploughman thought. The son of a bitch tries to dress just like Fred Astaire.
When Simms handed him his drink, Ploughman saw that it was a generous double. Simms’s own drink was a pale amber, and Ploughman put him down as a Scotch drinker. Over the years Ploughman had found that he got along more comfortably with those who drank bourbon rather than Scotch. He felt most at home, of course, with gin-heads like himself, but there weren’t too many of those around anymore. He was automatically suspicious of anyone who drank vodka; he believed that vodka drinkers had something to hide. Ploughman had many such prejudices which he enjoyed because of their certitude.
“I think over here, don’t you?” Simms said, gesturing slightly with his drink toward a corner that was formed by a long pale couch and a matching chair with heavy arms. Ploughman nodded and sat down in the chair after Simms chose the couch. There was a thick glass table with chrome legs in front of the couch and chair. Ploughman put his drink down on it while he lit one of his Camels.
“Well,” Simms said, “I believe you said you had something.”
Ploughman blew some smoke out, waved it away, and nodded. “A fortune-teller, maybe a Gypsy, that lives just over the line in L.A. We got a tip that maybe she isn’t a Gypsy at all.”
“What’s her name?”
“Szabo. Madame Magda Szabo.”
“Hungarian?”
“If I thought she was Hungarian, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
“And what makes you believe that she isn’t?”
Ploughman stared at Simms coldly. “You really want to know?”
Simms smiled slightly. “No, I don’t suppose I really do.” There was a brief silence and then Simms said, “You’re not completely sure, though, are you?”
“No.”
“You’ll have to get inside.”
“Will I?”
“I would think so. Perhaps you could use a policewoman. She could pose as a housewife who wanted her fortune told.”
Ploughman picked up his gin and finished it. Then he wiped his mouth, sighed his appreciation, and said, “I don’t think this is a police matter, Mr. Simms. I mean, here we got this Gypsy or Hungarian or whatever reading palms over in L.A. and as far as I can tell, minding her own business. Now, if she should turn out to be somebody else, maybe even somebody famous, well, that’s sorta interesting, maybe even kinda cute, but I can’t see why it should interest the Pelican Bay Police Department.”
Ploughman leaned back in his chair with the air of a man who was through for the day. Simms examined him for a moment, smiled faintly, and said, “Go on.”
“Go on?” Ploughman said, trying to put something like surprise into bis voice and succeeding fairly well.
“That’s right. Go on.”
“Oh, well, it sort of occurred to me that if somebody who said he was a reporter, or maybe even a private investigator, started nosing around the neighborhood over there on Breadstone Avenue — kind of asking questions about Madame Szabo and dropping a hint here and there that maybe she’s not Madame Szabo at all, but maybe somebody else, maybe even somebody sorta famous — well, I was just wondering what would happen if word about all this got back to Madame Szabo.”