Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994
- Автор: Bashover Albert, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1994
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994». Краткое содержание книги:
“Can’t guess? Well, I’m outa gas. Running on fumes. Now I think those vans got a reserve tank, somebody told me once at the Westbrook Hotel — they had this stripper marathon, I got talking to this guy had boosted one, or his brother had, but I might’ve knocked back a couple beers that day, I can’t remember for sure, or even how you would switch it, so now I’m stuck, right?”
Sigh.
“What can I do? Get out and start walking? I’m thinking about this, the van’s slowing down, an’ then, Jeez, bro, all of a sudden it happens.”
“Now we come to it.”
“I said we would. Something wet slides down the back of my neck. Big and clammy, like a giant worm glomming down my collar? Man, you know what that feels like? I just about lost it, George. I did. Just about jumped out the window and ran. Glance around quick to see what slimed me, and here’s this tongue, looks like four pounds of raw liver...”
“Jeez.”
“That’s what I said. Only stronger. Panic city, far as I’m concerned. Slab of raw liver an’ no potatoes. I stomp those brakes, George, I really stomp ’em. Twenny feet of rubber on the street, I’m drifting sideways, I already got one foot out the door, then I turn around for one last look to try and see what the hell has got a tongue like that — and there’s Ed. Then I remember the printing on the side of that vehicle — PARKS AND RECREATION. That van’s some kinda limo they use at the zoo for animals—”
“A limo, huh? To chauffeur around something that smells like a sack of moldy gym shoes? How’d Dufault get ahold of it?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what it is. Like I told you, it stunk. If you think Ed stinks, you should of smelled the van, whatever they carried in it, it wasn’t roses. You mention sack. Well, heaped in the back there’s all kind of sacks, I guess for animals, which I borrowed one of them, ditched the van where it was, and brought Ed home in it.”
“Why?”
Zeke sitting there. Slack-jawed. Gazing back like a dope.
“Why what?”
“Why’d you bring him home?”
“George. That animal. You know what it’s worth?”
“You asked me that already, I think I said I didn’t know. Now I’ll ask you, do you know what it’s worth?”
“I know dragons are rare. Practically extinct. Like the buffalo.”
“If you’d brought home a buffalo, at least we could eat it.”
“You’re not gonna eat Ed. You can forget that idea. No, I’m gonna keep him awhile, let the zoo get hot and bothered, then give somebody a call, the zoo keeper, see what we can arrange between us, him and me.”
“You mean to sit there and tell me you’re gonna ransom that creepy thing?”
“Why not. Isn’t that what Doof was gonna do?”
“Hold a giant lizard prisoner in your mother’s house, in your brother’s bedroom, and ransom it?”
“Why not?”
“Ma’s coming home.”
“She could be gone for days.”
George could only stare at the guy. There was no reasoning with Zeke when he got like this.
“Bro, you’ve outdone yourself.”
“I know it. And it is so a dragon. Reason I’m sure, it said so right there in the van, wrote down on a clipboard. One Komodo dragon. Which is Ed. Now listen. You listening, George?”
“Yeah.”
“You listening to me?”
“I’m listening.”
“What do you think a dragon — an animal like that — would eat for lunch? You think some Kraft Dinner? Or just what?”
Ma was still hot about what happened at the border. She snarled at Louie, who was angling the car out of the yield into the stream of returning cross-border shoppers on Route 75, heading north.
“Couple of criminals, those two.”
“Ma, your own sons...”
“They better not’ve done nothing — screwed up my house!”
“The house’ll be fine, Ma.”
“You think so.”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure.”
“Just as sure as God made little apples.”
She looked at him.
“You saying God made Li’l Abner?”
“Apples, Ma.”
“Apples. Abner. You said God made everything.”
“He did make everything.”
“He couldn’t of made the weasels. The devil must of done that when God wasn’t looking. And I’ll tell you something else. If they’ve tried anything smart in my house these last two days, some criminal activity, they’ll be meeting their maker a whole lot sooner than they think.”
“Please, Ma...”
“Couple of crooks.”
“Don’t say that, Ma. Remember why we came on this trip? To get our negative feelings under control. To learn how to stay calm and not get upset about things.”
“It’s because you don’t want me to drink.”
“Well...”
Rolling north on Route 75.
Louie hated it, Ma being bitter like this. Not so bad here in the car with just the two of them, but she’d blurt that sort of thing out anywhere. Like in the J. C. Penney in Fargo, when the manufacturer’s rep said to Ma — they were walking past a promo in the toy department — “Ma’am, we’re holding a survey. Asking folks if there was anything special they wanted for their kids...” And Ma throwing back at him: “Yeah, something poison. With a nail in it.”
You never knew with Ma.
Crossing the border, though, that was the kicker. Louie not sure what Ma was going to say. Something like, weapons? Sure, we got weapons. Got a missile launcher in the trunk from Colonel Qadhafi, put a hole in the White House the size of the Windsor tunnel. Ma lived to provoke the authorities. But this time she seemed content to sit there while Louie explained to the man that they were under their limit and had nothing to declare, Ma having already given her assurance she wouldn’t smuggle anything — “Heck, why would I? I haven’t even spent my limit, have I?” He’d snuck a peek into her bags at the motel just the same, feeling guilty about it when he didn’t find anything. But he still expected her to open her mouth and get them both tossed into a holding cell.
Which is sort of what happened.
The guard finished with them. He was already stepping back to flag them through when somebody called him away and a female customs officer moved up and took his place.
“God,” Ma hissed, “lookit the face on it!”
If there was anything Ma hated more than male authorities, it was female authorities. Especially females in uniform. Ma said females all wearing the same outfit was a perversion of the natural order.
“Excuse me?” the girl said into the window.
This girl with an official tone in her voice, looking past Louie now at Ma, who was wearing an expression of contempt on her face that summed up the feelings she’d been collecting about officialdom for the past fifty years.
Louie hurriedly said, “Good afternoon, ma’am, we—”
But that was all he got out before Ma interrupted him. Louie couldn’t believe it, the girl right there at the window and Ma flatly ignoring her, going: “Goddamn women are the worst, you know, give ’em some power. Some redneck broad trying to prove herself.”
The female customs officer’s lips pinched together and she told Louie in a snippy way to pull the car over, and then took Ma and her suitcase into the building and kept her there for twenty-five minutes, half an hour, and when Ma finally came back out you could see the heat waves radiating off her as she stalked back to the car across the asphalt, and nearly broke a hinge slamming the door, and opened her mouth and let Louie have it as they drove away. Hollering.
“Well, why didn’t you help me?”
“Ma, I couldn’t—”
“You know what they did to me?”