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:
There was no sound for a moment until Overby said, “Aaaah!” in a long contented sigh. A big, hard smile appeared on his face as his eyes narrowed and glistened with anticipation. It was beginning to have the sound and the feel of his kind of operation, because picking somebody clean was what Otherguy Overby knew he did best.
Chapter 22
It took a while to mollify Eddie McBride and convince him that his stolen plunder was indeed gone. It took almost half an hour, in fact, and the clincher came when Otherguy Overby served up his own testimonial.
“Kid, let me tell you something,” Overby said. “I’ve known these guys for what is it now, ten years maybe?”
Wu nodded, “About that.”
“Since I got out of the Air Force in the P.I.s eighteen years ago I’ve worked a lot of scams with all sorts of guys out there.” Overby jerked his head west in a gesture that seemed to take in everything on the far side of Honolulu. “And Artie and Quincy and me’ve gone in a few times together on some sorta cute deals and I never had no regrets. But let me tell you this — and you can ask anybody out there.” Again, Overby seemed to scoop up the entire Pacific in a single nod. “These guys never stiffed nobody,” Overby said. “But nobody.” There was a brief pause and then an afterthought that was almost a codicil; “Unless they deserved it.”
“Jesus, Otherguy,” Wu said. “I think I’ll have that on my tombstone. ‘He Never Stiffed Nobody Unless He Deserved It.’ ”
“Well, it’s a fact,” Overby said. “I oughta know.”
The sullen anger was almost gone from McBride’s face now. In its stead was a bleak look of reduced expectations and near resignation. He stared first at Wu and then at Durant as he absently stroked his taped-up left thumb.
“What do I get to do, Durant?” he said. “Polish the silver and take out the trash?”
“Can you speak English, Eddie?” Durant said.
“Yeah, when I have to.” McBride smiled a little, but not much. “They like you to talk good in the embassies.”
Durant looked at Overby. “You got a paper man here, Otherguy?”
“In Long Beach.”
“He any good?”
Overby smiled. “He fixed me up with a hell of a nice letter from the Governor.”
“We heard about that. How is he on ID?”
“Tops.”
“I think,” Durant said slowly, “that we’re going to turn Eddie into a reporter.” He looked at Wu.
The big man nodded. “An out-of-town reporter,” he said. “Way out of town.”
“You want the whole kit?” Overby said.
“Everything,” Durant said. “Driver’s license, Social Security, a couple of credit cards, the works. But the main thing will be a press card.”
“Credit cards come awful high.”
“We know,” Wu said.
Overby shrugged. “Okay. What name and what paper?”
“What name would you like, Eddie?”
McBride thought about it. “Maybe one with an X in it. For some reason I’ve always liked names with X’s in them.”
“What about Max?” Wu said.
“Anthony Max,” McBride said. “Anthony C. Max.”
“What’s the C for?” Overby said.
“How the fuck should I know?”
Overby grinned. “What paper?”
“You know Washington, Eddie?” Wu said.
McBride nodded. “They had me at Arlington for six months. It was good duty except for the chickenshit.”
“Make it The Washington Post, Otherguy,” Wu said.
Overby’s eyebrows went up. “That’s a little rich, isn’t it?”
Wu shook his head. “I have the feeling that people out here probably think that talking to a Post reporter might well be their — uh — gateway to stardom.” Wu wrapped the phrase in heavy irony.
Overby didn’t notice. “Gateway to stardom. That’s kinda nice. And shit, you know something? You’re probably right. What else?”
“How hot are you now, Eddie?” Durant said.
“The cops aren’t looking for me. We checked. Or Otherguy did.”
“What about Solly Gesini?”
“He hasn’t been around his place. At least, not today. We checked on that too.”
Durant studied McBride for a moment. “You willing to take a chance?”
McBride looked down at his taped-up thumb and then back up at Durant. “What’s the payoff?”
“Five hundred a week instead of three, free rent, and a guaranteed ten thousand when it’s over. Plus a percentage of the net take, if there is any.”
“How big a percentage?”
“Ten.”
“Ten percent of how much?”
“We don’t know yet,” Wu said. “Maybe nothing.”
McBride once more looked down at his left thumb and began to stroke it gently. After a moment, still stroking and staring at his thumb, he said, “I’m in.”
“One more thing, Otherguy,” Durant said.
“What?”
“That reporter who works on the paper here, the one you dug up.”
“Herb Conroy. What about him?”
“How hard did you squeeze him?”
“Pretty hard.”
“Has he got anything left?”
It took a few moments for Overby to make up his mind. “Maybe. In fact, he might have a whole lot of stuff that he’s been saving up.”
“We want to make him prove how much he knows,” Durant said. “And we had an idea that we’d like to try out on you.”
Overby nodded.
“Suppose Conroy were to be offered a new job on a magazine by the magazine’s owner, and suppose that the offer were to be made in very impressive surroundings. A rich man’s club, for example. Would he bite?”
“Hard,” Overby said.
“And would he talk?” Wu said.
Overby grinned. “Forever. He’d probably think it was his last shot at the big time. He’d tell you everything he knew and then start making it up. But you wanta know what else he’d do?”
“What?” Durant said.
“He’d get drunk and blow it.”
Durant leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “That would be too bad, wouldn’t it?”
“Nah, not really. You gotta understand guys like Conroy, and I’ve known a bunch of them. Guys like him way down deep wanta blow it. They’re hooked on fucking up the same way they’re hooked on booze. You see, as long as they keep on blowing things, then they’ve got their excuse to keep on drinking. And of course, after he blows it he can go around telling everybody how he’s been offered this big job and turned it down.”
“What does he think you are?”
“Some kind of businessman.”
“Could you set it up?”
“No problem.”
Durant looked at Wu, who nodded. “Your phone work?” Durant asked Overby.
“Sure. It’s not in my name yet, but they haven’t cut it off.”
Durant rose and crossed the room to the phone. He dialed a number and then talked softly into the phone for nearly five minutes. When through he returned to his chair.
“Okay, Otherguy,” Durant said, “here’s your pitch. You may want to write some of it down.”
Overby nodded and took a small black notebook from his hip pocket and a ball-point pen from his carefully tailored blue shirt with epaulettes and a small flap pocket on the left sleeve where the pen was kept. “Let’s hear it,” Overby said.
“Conroy thinks you’re a businessman, right?” After Overby nodded, Durant went on. “Okay, let’s say at a meeting — or rather, dinner — that you had the other day with the owner and publisher of The Pacific Magazine, he just happened to mention to you how difficult it was to find seasoned writers and editors. I think you might even use ‘seasoned.’ It’s a pretty good euphemism for hack.”