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:
Overby wrote down seasoned and after it Pacific Mag.
“Well, you mentioned Conroy’s name. In fact, you did more than mention it — you made him sound like a potential Pulitzer Prize candidate. The owner-publisher of The Pacific is so impressed with your judgment, of course, that he expressed interest in meeting Mr. Conroy and asked you to invite him to lunch at one o’clock on Monday at the Woodbury Club in Beverly Hills.”
Overby wrote down 1 — Mon. — Woodbury Club and then looked up at Durant. Overby licked his lips, smiled a little, and said, “I’ve gotta have a name, don’t I?”
“Randall Piers,” Durant said, and out of curiosity he watched Overby’s reaction. Overby wrote Randall Piers down slowly without asking how to spell it. When he looked up again his eyes were narrow and glittering with suspicion and his mouth was stretched into a small, tight, stiff smile.
“You got a ring in my nose, don’t you, Quincy?” he said.
Durant smiled. “A small one.”
“And you’re just leading me along.”
“You’re forgetting something, Otherguy,” Wu said.
“What?”
“ ‘We Never Stiffed Nobody Unless He Deserved It.’ ”
Overby made a curious sound that was half snort, half bark. “Yeah, shit, but when I mentioned Randall Piers’s name to you guys before, you didn’t bat an eye. You just sat there, all big smiles, and let my mouth run.”
“We were listening, Otherguy,” Wu said.
“Sure you were. Okay, I’ll go along. I’ll go along in the dark because it feels fat and smells rich. But sooner or later you’re gonna have to let me in — all the way in.”
“We know,” Durant said.
“Okay. As long as you know. Now, are you two gonna be at the lunch?”
“We wouldn’t miss it,” Wu said.
“Who’re you gonna be?”
“I think we’re going to be two of Mr. Piers’s closest business advisers from San Francisco.”
“You wanta be Dr. Wu, Artie?”
“Why not?”
“Yeah, you can rattle off some of that economic mumbo jumbo, the way you used to. It always impresses the hell out of people.”
“Well, I guess that’s it” Durant said, and rose.
“Except for one thing,” Eddie McBride said. “Me. After I get to be a reporter, what do I do?”
“You start looking for someone, Eddie,” Durant said.
“Who?”
“We’ll let you know.”
McBride shook his head slowly. “You guys,” he said. “You guys don’t give away hardly anything, do you?”
“As little as possible,” Artie Wu said.
Wu and Durant left and took the elevator down and then got into the Chrysler and started off to pick up Durant’s car. Twenty-six minutes later they were in jail.
Chapter 23
When Oscar Ploughman, the police chief, and Lt. Lake came out of the Hungry Horse restaurant at Fifth and Seashore Drive after a late, long, and somewhat liquid free lunch, they walked slowly toward their unmarked black Plymouth, which they had left parked by the customary fireplug.
Lt. Lake went around the rear of the car and noticed for the first time the FUZZ that had been written in the dust on the trunk by little Sandy Choi. Because Lt. Lake didn’t like to get his hands dirty unless he had to, he asked Ploughman to hand him the dustcloth that was kept in the glove compartment.
While Lake got rid of the FUZZ on the back of the car. Ploughman out of habit quartered the street scene with his eyes, then divided it up into eighths; sifting the faces through his mind; separating them, as he always did, into thieves, potential thieves, and victims. Ploughman placed a great deal of faith in his physiognomical powers and often lectured Lt. Lake on the significance of such key features as too much earlobe or too little chin. Lt. Lake often told the chief of police that he was full of shit.
Ploughman was about to climb into the car when he noticed the big green Chrysler station wagon that came around the corner far too fast, narrowly missing a double-parked Coors beer truck. But it wasn’t the driving that attracted Ploughman’s attention. It was the driver. One word clicked into his mind: Chinaman.
“Let’s go,” Ploughman snapped, and slid into the car, slamming the door.
Lt. Lake got behind the wheel, too slowly to please Ploughman.
“For Christ’s sake, shake a leg.”
“Why?”
“That green Chrysler up there. I wanta take a look.”
It took them nearly two blocks to catch up with the Chrysler. At the siren’s low, tentative growl Artie Wu looked in his rearview mirror and saw the red light that Ploughman was flicking on and off through the Plymouth’s windshield. “Ah, shit,” Wu said.
“Just what we needed,” Durant said as Wu pulled the station wagon over to the curb.
“What the hell was I doing?”
“You were behind the wheel,” Durant said, “which should be a crime in any state.”
Ploughman and Lake got out of the Plymouth and walked toward the Chrysler with the slow, measured, somehow ominous tread that all policemen seem to use when going to do their duty. Ploughman went around the left side, where Wu was; Lake, around the right.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Ploughman said.
Wu nodded. “Afternoon.”
“Mind if I see your license?”
“Sure,” Wu said, and dug it out of the wallet that he had already taken from his pocket. On the other side of the car, Lt. Lake bent down for a look at Durant. They nodded at each other, but found nothing to say.
Ploughman examined Wu’s license and read the name off slowly. “Arthur Case Wu. That’s how you pronounce it, isn’t it? Wu — like in, well, Wu.”
“Yeah,” Artie Wu said. “Like in Wu.”
“You’re from Santa Monica, Mr. Wu.”
“That’s right.”
“Nice little town, Santa Monica. Quiet, pretty, not much smog. I wonder if you drive over in Santa Monica like you do here, Mr. Wu?”
“I drive about the same way everywhere.”
“Do you realize that you were doing forty-two miles per hour in a thirty-mile zone and that you were also weaving in what I’d have to call a dangerous manner?”
Artie Wu said what nearly everybody says to the arresting officer: “Who, me?”
Ploughman leaned down, stuck his head halfway into the car, and sniffed a couple of times — big, loud, ostentatious sniffs. He could smell the beer on Wu’s breath, which pleased him. Wu didn’t have to sniff to smell all the gin that Ploughman had drunk that day.
Ploughman straightened up and said, “Mr. Wu, I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of the car, please.”
Wu got out of the car. The two men were nearly the same height and the same weight. They eyed each other for a moment, exchanging silent appreciations of each other’s size.
“Mr. Wu, have you been drinking, by any chance?” Ploughman said, keeping his voice friendly and polite.
Wu tried to remember. There had been the beer at Overby’s. But that was all. “I had a beer,” he said.
“Just one?” Ploughman said. “Not a couple?”
“Just one.”
“You hear that, Lt. Lake? Mr. Wu blames his driving on a single beer.”
“From the way he was driving, I’d say he’d had a couple,” Lake said. “A couple of dozen.”
“Mr. Wu,” Ploughman said, “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to walk ten feet in that direction placing one foot directly in front of the other, then turn, and walk back to me in the same way. Would you do that for me, please?”