Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006
- Автор: Бетанкур Джон Грегори, Jr. William J. Carroll,
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Roger regarded him thoughtfully. “As a matter of fact, that brings us to what I had in mind in the first place — the shady tactics, the scams and scandals—”
“The substitutions, the fakes and frauds,” completed Nic. “Yes, I remember.”
“Sounds like you’re just the man for the job,” Roger said heartily. “Just one thing though—” His tone grew solemn. “—the villains may not all be as benevolent as Uncle Harold. There’s big money out there, Nic, and the people making it are not only serious but deadly serious — and I mean deadly.”
“I’d like to take a crack at it,” said Nic.
“Good man! Maybe in you we have Sancerre’s answer to Sam Spade — wasn’t he another of San Francisco’s favorite sons?”
Shoes
by Scott Mackay
Linc, alone in the class, got up, went to the front, opened Mr. Gonzalez’s drawer, and found an Exacto knife. Could blood freeze? He walked to the window, looked at the parking lot, and saw it filling with cars. He glanced at the basketball court and wondered if he would ever play hoops again. Without Madmaxx, it wouldn’t be the same. Dull January light struggled through the glass, and a few snowflakes fell from the sky. Linc opened the window, clenched his teeth, and drew the blade across his finger.
He had to squeeze the blood out. He smeared it onto the concrete windowsill. Not good enough. Madmaxx always said that. So Linc cut deeper, and this time got a decent flow. The blade was both hot and cool against his skin, with something satisfying yet terrifying about the way it sank into his flesh.
Blood fell in drops, bright round rubies, a pattern of dots like his chording chart at home, Madmaxx always saying no one played guitar the way Linc did, going to be a big star one day, the next Hendrix, the next B. B. King. Blood, at first steaming in the cold of a Detroit winter morning, then hardening.
Dilbert came in and said, “Close the friggin’ window,” so Linc closed it because Dilbert was like Papa Smurf, someone you had to fear. Linc glanced at the blood outside the closed window. Was it freezing? He couldn’t tell. He went to his science bench, got a paper towel, and wrapped his finger. He walked to the front, put the Exacto knife back, and returned to his seat.
Dilbert was smiling at him.
“What you lookin’ at?” said Linc.
“I’m lookin’ at you, boy.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to see here.”
But Dilbert stared, sitting at his own science bench, round and big, sure of his place in the universe, keeping the secret of Madmaxx’s murder buried under all that bling.
Other students drifted in, and the noise level went up. Mr. Constanza came in, then went out. Niveda came in. She was dark, a puma woman in an expensive leather jacket. Not about shoes, but about Niveda.
Mr. Constanza came back.
Over the next several minutes he taught chemical equations.
But Linc was too busy solving his own equations.
X plus Y didn’t necessarily equal Z. Not about a pair of shoes, but about Niveda, he was sure of it.
Papa Smurf came in at quarter past nine, shoulders jerking back and forth, head held high, smelling like Camels, do-rag on his head, bling-bling everywhere, and no late note from the office.
Mr. Constanza said, “Take your seat, Mr. Guthrie.”
But Papa Smurf didn’t take his seat. He came over and sat next to Linc. Linc’s fear opened wide and hurtful. He thought Mr. Constanza might tell Mr. Guthrie to go to his usual seat, but the science teacher continued with his chemical equations, his voice tight, like he knew what was going on but was too scared to say anything. Dilbert glanced. Niveda glanced.
Papa Smurf said, “We good?”
In a huge betrayal of Madmaxx, Linc said, “We good.”
“Water under the bridge, my friend. Got killed for a pair o’ shoes, that’s all. Someone stole ’em away. Happens all the time. Had nothing to do with me. So stop guessin’. You wasn’t there. How you know?”
Papa Smurf got up and took his seat.
Linc concentrated on his work, but kept wondering if his blood was freezing yet.
The class ended and he looked out the window.
Frozen solid.
Blood froze.
Like a cherry Popsicle.
He pictured it around Madmaxx’s body, and it made him weak. He looked at the parking lot. Then at the gray sky. Then into the basketball court.
Madmaxx’s Filas hung from the basketball hoop, a flash of yellow, like a pair of canaries tangled in shoelaces. And seeing Madmaxx’s yellow shoes dangling from the netless hoop, Linc knew it wasn’t about shoes, no, not at all, but about trophies, and big-game hunting, and a cockiness so twisted and disrespectful he knew he had to conquer his fear and bring Papa Smurf down. Detective Donaldson wasn’t doing it. The shoes swayed in the wind. Not stolen but gloated over. Linc glanced at Papa Smurf. Now that class was over, Papa Smurf strutted toward the door, proud, insolent, and defiant. Papa Smurf wasn’t afraid of Mr. Constanza, of Detective Donaldson, or of Linc.
But Linc would bring him down.
And Papa Smurf would burn.
After school, he went to the basketball court.
He didn’t see Papa Smurf, Dilbert, or Niveda, but that didn’t matter — other students watched, and they were like vidcams attached to Papa Smurf.
Linc took out his cell, thumbed Detective Donaldson’s number, and got Donaldson’s voice mail, “I’m away from my desk right now, please leave a message,” but Linc didn’t leave a message.
He put his cell away and looked around. Snow fell. Snowflakes had always fascinated Madmaxx. “How can every one be different, Linc? In the whole history of the world, in every snowfall, every flake was different, an endless variety of them going back millions of years. And if you look at grains of sand on a beach you see the same thing. Each one is different.”
Linc walked to the hoop and shimmied the pole.
A change came over the schoolyard, the same thing that happened to the hair on a cat’s back when a dog got too close. He knew he didn’t have much time if he wanted to take those shoes back to Madmaxx’s mother. Mrs. Sameer would want those shoes. He was good at shimmying poles and reached the top a few seconds later.
He inspected the shoes for blood because wouldn’t there have to be blood? But he saw no blood — the shoes were clean, too clean. Maytagged thoroughly. Their yellow fabric looked faded, the blue and red Fila logo blanched, and the laces white. Papa Smurf, thinking like a cop. Mr. Guthrie, taking science class one step further. X plus Y equals Z, but without proof, where did that leave him?
Didn’t matter.
The jackals spilled through the chain-link gate like Russian soldiers over German lines, yanked him from the hoop, and then it was, “Leave the shoes alone,” and a succession of kicks and punches that left him curled like the last of a species on the verge of extinction.
He lay there for a long time. He tasted blood. He looked at the shoes as they dangled in the wind. Maybe instead of Papa Smurf burning, he would be the one to burn. Another young black man, dead in the suburbs. But so much more — a young man who was going to be the next Hendrix, the next B. B. King, who understood the blues the way a physicist understood nature, not just another dead black man, but a whole universe of thought, feeling, and memory.
Like Madmaxx.
Now with his yellow Fila high-tops drooping from the rusted orange basketball hoop, obscene, a pair of lemony gonads, as good as parading Madmaxx’s head on a stake.
His ma asked him what happened, but he wouldn’t say.
His pa asked him what happened, but he wouldn’t say.
They left him to his fear.
He climbed the stairs to his room.
The walls slanted to a low ceiling. A poster of Hendrix hung next to the window.