The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
“He’s around,” Joe Young said, looking toward the door. “You ready? We gotta go.”
She said, “I like that suit on you,” giving herself time to think. The points of his shirt collar spread open to his shoulders, his hair long on top but skinned on the sides, his ears sticking out, Joe Young grinning like it was his usual dopey expression. “I’m not ready just yet,” Louly said. “I don’t have my running-away money with me.”
“How much you save?”
“Thirty-eight dollars.”
“Jesus, working here two years?”
“I told you, Otis takes most of my wages.”
“You want, I’ll crack his head for him.”
“I wouldn’t mind. The thing is, I’m not leaving without my money.”
Joe Young looked at the door as he put his hand in his pocket saying, “Little girl, I’m paying your way. You won’t need the thirty-eight dollars.”
Little girl — she stood a good two inches taller than he was, even in his run-down cowboy boots. She was shaking her head now. “Otis bought a Model A Roadster with my money, paying it off twenty a month.”
“You want to steal his car?”
“It’s mine, ain’t it, if he’s using my money?”
Louly had made up her mind and Joe Young was anxious to get out of here. She had pay coming, so they’d meet November first-no, the second-at the Georgian Hotel in Henryetta, in the coffee shop around noon.
The day before she was to leave Louly told her mom she was sick. Instead of going to work she got her things ready and used the curling iron on her hair. The next day, while her mom was hanging wash, the two boys at school and Otis was out in the field, Louly rolled the Ford Roadster out of the shed and drove into Sallisaw to get a pack of Lucky Strikes for the trip. She loved to smoke and had been doing it with boys but never had to buy the cigarettes. When boys wanted to take her in the woods she’d ask, “You have Luckies? A whole pack?”
The druggist’s son, one of her boyfriends, gave her a pack free of charge and asked where she was yesterday, acting sly, saying, “You’re always talking about Pretty Boy Floyd, I wonder if he stopped by your house.”
They liked to kid her about Pretty Boy. Louly, not paying close attention, said, “I’ll let you know when he does.” But then saw the boy about to spring something on her.
“The reason I ask, he was here in town yesterday, Pretty Boy Floyd was.”
She said, “Oh?” careful now. The boy took his time and it was hard not to grab him by the front of his shirt.
“Yeah, he brought his family down from Akins, his mama, two of his sisters, some others, so they could watch him rob the bank. His grampa watched from the field across the street. Bob Riggs, the bank assistant, said Pretty Boy had a Tommy gun, but did not shoot anybody. He come out of the bank with two thousand five-hundred and thirty-one dollars, him and two other fellas. He gave some of the money to his people and they say to anybody he thought hadn’t et in a while, everybody grinning at him. Pretty Boy had Bob Riggs ride on the running board to the end of town and let him go.”
This was the second time now he had been close by: first when his daddy was killed only seven miles away and now right here in Sallisaw, all kinds of people seeing him, damn it, but her. Just yesterday...
He knew she lived in Sallisaw. She wondered if he’d looked for her in the crowd watching.
She had to wonder, too, if she had been here would he of recognized her, and bet he would’ve.
She said to her boyfriend in the drugstore, “Charley ever hears you called him Pretty Boy, he’ll come in for a pack of Luckies, what he always smokes, and then kill you.”
The Georgian was the biggest hotel Louly had ever seen. Coming up on it in the Model A she was thinking these bank robbers knew how to live high on the hog. She pulled in front and a colored man in a green uniform coat with gold buttons and a peaked cap came around to open her door-and saw Joe Young on the sidewalk waving the doorman away, saying as he got in the car, “Jesus Christ, you stole it, didn’t you. Jesus, how old are you, going around stealing cars?”
Louly said, “How old you have to be?”
He told her to keep straight ahead.
She said, “You aren’t staying at the hotel?”
“I’m at a tourist court.”
“Charley there?”
“He’s around someplace.”
“Well, he was in Sallisaw yesterday,” Louly sounding mad now, “if that’s what you call around” seeing by Joe Young’s expression she was telling him something he didn’t know. “I thought you were in his gang.”
“He’s got an old boy name of Birdwell with him. I hook up with Choc when I feel like it.”
She was almost positive Joe Young was lying to her.
“Am I gonna see Charley or not?”
“He’ll be back, don’t worry your head about it.” He said, “We got this car, I won’t have to steal one.” Joe Young in a good mood now. “What we need Choc for?” Grinning at her close by the car. “We got each other.”
It told her what to expect.
Once they got to the tourist court and were in No. 7, like a little one-room frame house that needed paint, Joe Young took off his coat and she saw the Colt automatic with a pearl grip stuck in his pants. He laid it on the dresser by a full quart of whiskey and two glasses and poured them each a drink, his bigger than hers. She stood watching till he told her to take off her coat and when she did told her to take off her dress. Now she was in her white brassiere and panties. Joe Young looked her over before handing the smaller drink to her and clinking glasses.
“To our future.”
Louly said, “Doing what?” Seeing the fun in his eyes.
He put his glass on the dresser, brought two.38 revolvers from the drawer and offered her one. She took it, big and heavy in her hand and said, “Yeah...?”
“You know how to steal a car,” Joe Young said, “and I admire that. But I bet you never held up a place with a gun.”
“That’s what we’re gonna do?”
“Start with a filling station and work you up to a bank.” He said, “I bet you never been to bed with a grown man, either.”
Louly felt like telling him she was bigger than he was, taller, anyway, but didn’t. This was a new experience, different than with boys her age in the woods, and she wanted to see what it was like.
Well, he grunted a lot and was rough, breathed hard through his nose and smelled of Lucky Tiger hair tonic, but it wasn’t that much different than with boys. She got to liking it before he was finished and patted his back with her rough, cotton-picking fingers till he began to breathe easy again. Once he rolled off her she got her douche bag out of Otis’s grip she’d taken and went in the bathroom, Joe Young’s voice following her with, “Whoooeee...”
Then saying, “You know what you are now, little girl? You’re what’s called a gun moll.”
Joe Young slept awhile, woke up still snookered and wanted to get something to eat. So they went to Purity, Joe said was the best place in Henryetta.
Louly said at the table, “Charley Floyd came in here one time. People found out he was in town and everybody stayed in their house.”
“How you know that?”
“I know everything about him was ever written, some things only told.”
“Where’d he stay in Kansas City?”
“Mother Ash’s boardinghouse on Holmes Street.”
“Who’d he go to Ohio with?”
“The Jim Bradley gang.”
Joe Young picked up his coffee he’d poured a shot into. He said, “You’re gonna start reading about me, chile.”
It reminded her she didn’t know how old Joe Young was and took this opportunity to ask him.