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:
She did hesitate before saying his name.
“When’s Joe coming back?”
“Later on. ‘Cept he’ll stay with his friends he gets too drunk.”
Carl Webster said, “I wouldn’t mind talking to him,” and gave Louly a business card from his pocket with a star on it and letters she could feel. “Ask Joe to give me a call later on, or sometime tomorrow if he don’t come home. Y’all just driving around?”
“Seeing the sights.”
Every time she kept looking at him he’d start to smile. Carl Webster. She could feel his name under her thumb. She said, “You’re writing a book on Charley Floyd?”
“Not a real one. We’re collecting the names of anybody he ever knew that might want to put him up.”
“You gonna ask me if I would?”
There was the smile.
“I already know.”
She liked the way he shook her hand and thanked her, and the way he put on his hat, nothing to it, knowing how to cock it just right.
Joe Young returned about 9:00 a.m. making awful faces working his mouth, trying to get a taste out of it. He came in the room and took a good pull on the whiskey bottle, then another, sucked in his breath and let it out and seemed better. He said, “I don’t believe what we got into with those chickens last night.”
“Wait,” Louly said. She told him about the marshal stopping by, and Joe Young became jittery and couldn’t stand still, saying, “I ain’t going back. I done ten years and swore to Jesus I ain’t ever going back.” Now he was looking out the window.
Louly wanted to know what Joe and his buddies did to the chickens, but knew they had to get out of here. She tried to tell him they had to leave, right now.
He was still drunk or starting over, saying now, “They come after me they’s gonna be a shoot-out. I’m taking some of the scudders with me.” Maybe not even knowing he was playing Jimmy Cagney now.
Louly said, “You only stole seventy-one dollars.”
“I done other things in the State of Oklahoma,” Joe Young said. “They take me alive I’m facing fifteen years to life. I swear I ain’t going back.”
What was going on here? They’re driving around looking for Charley Floyd-the next thing this dumbbell wants to shoot it out with the law and here she was in this room with him. “They don’t want me” Louly said. Knowing she couldn’t talk to him, the state he was in. She had to get out of here, open the door and run. She got her crocheted bag from the dresser, started for the door and was stopped by the bullhorn.
The electrified voice loud, saying, “JOE YOUNG, COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”
What Joe Young did-he held his Colt straight out in front of him and started firing through the glass pane in the door. People outside returned fire, blew out the window, gouged the door with gunfire, Louly dropping to the floor with her bag, until she heard a voice on the bullhorn call out, “HOLD YOUR FIRE.”
Louly looked up to see Joe Young standing by the bed with a gun in each hand now, the Colt and a.38. She said, “Joe, you have to give yourself up. They’re gonna kill both of us you keep shooting.”
He didn’t even look at her. He yelled out, “Come and get me!” and started shooting again, both guns at the same time.
Louly’s hand went in the crocheted bag and came out with the.38 he’d given her to help him rob places. From the floor, up on her elbows, she aimed the revolver at Joe Young, cocked it and bam, shot him through the chest.
Louly stepped away from the door and the marshal, Carl Webster, came in holding a revolver. She saw men standing out in the road, some with rifles. Carl Webster was looking at Joe Young curled up on the floor. He holstered his revolver, took the.38 from Louly and sniffed the end of the barrel and stared at her without saying anything before going to one knee to see if Joe Young had a pulse. He got up saying, “The Oklahoma Bankers Association wants people like Joe dead, and that’s what he is. They’re gonna give you a five-hundred-dollar reward for killing your friend.”
“He wasn’t a friend.”
“He was yesterday. Make up your mind.”
“He stole the car and made me go with him.”
“Against your will,” Carl Webster said. “Stay with that you won’t go to jail.”
“It’s true, Carl,” Louly said, showing him her big brown eyes. “Really.”
The headline in the Muskogee paper, over a small photo of Louise Ring, said sallisaw girl shoots abductor.
According to Louise, she had to stop Joe Young or be killed in the exchange of gunfire. She also said her name was Louly, not Louise. The marshal on the scene said it was a courageous act, the girl shooting her abductor. “We considered Joe Young a mad-dog felon with nothing to lose.” The marshal said that Joe Young was suspected of being a member of Pretty Boy Floyd’s gang. He also mentioned that Louly Ring was related to Floyd’s wife and acquainted with the desperado.
The headline in the Tulsa paper, over a larger photo of Louly, said girl shoots member of pretty boy Floyd gang. The story told that Louly Ring was a friend of Pretty Boy’s and had been abducted by the former gang member, who, according to Louly, “was jealous of Pretty Boy and kidnapped me to get back at him.”
By the time the story had appeared everywhere from Ft. Smith, Arkansas, to Toledo, Ohio, the favorite headline was
GIRLFRIEND OF PRETTY BOY FLOYD GUNS DOWN MAD-DOG FELON.
The marshal, Carl Webster, came to Sallisaw on business and stopped in Harkrider’s for a sack of Beechnut scrap. He was surprised to see Louly.
“You’re still working here?”
“I’m shopping for my mom. No, Carl, I got my reward money and I’ll be leaving here pretty soon. Otis hasn’t said a word to me since I got home. He’s afraid I might shoot him.”
“Where you going?”
“This writer for True Detective wants me to come to Tulsa. They’ll put me up at the Mayo Hotel and pay a hundred dollars for my story. Reporters from Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri, have already been to the house.”
“You’re sure getting a lot of mileage out of knowing Pretty Boy, aren’t you?”
“They start out asking about my shooting that dumbbell Joe Young, but what they want to know, if I’m Charley Floyd’s girlfriend. I say, ‘Where’d you get that idea?’”
“But you don’t deny it.”
“I say, ‘Believe what you want, since I can’t change your mind.’ What I wonder, you think Charley’s read about it and seen my picture?”
“Sure he has,” Carl said. “I imagine he’d even like to see you again, in person.”
Louly said, “Wow,” like she hadn’t thought of that before this moment. “You’re kidding. Really?”
Laura Lippman
The Crack Cocaine Diet
(Or: How to Lose a Lot of Weight and Change Your Life in Just One Weekend)
From The Cocaine Chronicles
I had just broken up with Brandon and Molly had just broken up with Keith, so we needed new dresses to go to this party where we knew they were going to be. But before we could buy the dresses, we needed to lose weight because we had to look fabulous, kiss-my-ass-fuck-you fabulous. Kiss-my-ass-fuck-you-and-your-dick-is-really-tiny fabulous. Because, after all, Brandon and Keith were going to be at this party and if we couldn’t get new boyfriends in less than eight days, we could at least go down a dress size and look so good that Brandon and Keith and everybody else in the immediate vicinity would wonder how they ever let us go. I mean, yes, technically, they broke up with us, but we had been thinking about it, weighing the pros and cons. (Pro: They spent money on us. Con: They were childish. Pro: We had them. Con: Tiny dicks, see above.) See, we were being methodical and they were just all impulsive, the way guys are. That would be another con — poor impulse control. Me, I never do anything without thinking it through very carefully. Anyway, I’m not sure what went down with Molly and Keith, but Brandon said if he wanted to be nagged all the time, he’d move back in with his mother, and I said, “Well, given that she still does your laundry and makes you food, it’s not as if you really moved out,” and that was that. No big loss.