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:
He lifted his Stratocaster from its case — slaved away all last summer at Starbucks, slinging café lattes and overpriced carrot cake so he could own it. Now he had this wonderful Nina, going to take him on the voyage of the century. Only for the last two weeks, ever since Madmaxx got killed, his hands had been cramped and his ears sour. He tried again, plugging the instrument into his mini-amp, riffing on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Little Wing, but the notes came out tinny and dead. Couldn’t stop thinking about the Fila running shoes hanging from the basketball hoop, and it was sucking the life out of his music.
Meat loaf for supper, and the ketchup stung his lips, but he ate it anyway. He was big, rangy, had to eat, even if he didn’t feel like it — his body was an eating machine.
As he ate, he brooded. He felt ashamed. He felt afraid. The jackals coming through the chain-link gate had been a warning. Tread not upon Papa Smurf’s trophy. Taking those shoes down to give to Mrs. Sameer — was it really going to bring Madmaxx back? Madmaxx was never coming back. No more thumb gymnastics with Madmaxx on the Xbox. No more sneak-ins at the Showcase Cinema. No more concerts at the Fox. He drank his chocolate milk in a daze. Madmaxx was gone, and Linc felt he should have done more — should have reached out and grabbed on, should have yanked Madmaxx away from the puma woman before it had been too late, before Niveda had infected the whole thing with her voodoo. About a woman, not about shoes.
He tried a few more phrases of Little Wing after supper, but his hands wouldn’t uncramp, and his ears were as deaf as Beethoven’s, so he put his guitar away.
He sat on his bed, his mind going over the same thing again and again. Should have warned Madmaxx that his voice got too loud around Niveda, he talked too smart, and the shift of gravity from Papa Smurf to Madmaxx had been too strong for the puma woman to resist. Papa Smurf, jealous, had finally been forced to use, as he liked to say, his sacred relic, holding it in his palms like an offering. “Look at this, this be my gun, this be my ticket to power, you may look, but you may not touch,” Papa Smurf always showing off his 9mm glory.
Tears burned. Always these tears at this time of night. His anger flared. Madmaxx, his main man. He had to do something about it. He took out his cell and thumbed the digits of Detective Donaldson’s number. This time he got through. “Detective Donaldson, Homicide,” a white man’s voice, flat, unmelodic, with none of the sing-song of the ’hood in it.
“Is Lincoln Arnold,” he said. “’Member you talk to me about Ahmed Sameer? You axe me questions about ’im?”
Long pause at the other end of the line, and Linc pictured cops scurrying all over the squad room, like he was a kidnapper calling with a ransom demand, and the call had to be traced, Donaldson pointing here, pointing there, a half-finished Big Mac at his elbow, a Coke with too much ice by the phone, other cops clicking away at computers, satellite maps coming to their screens, geocentric orbits changing, all the things Madmaxx said cops did when they were breaking a big case.
“Go ahead, Lincoln.”
“You ain’t recordin’ me?”
“The line is clean. It’s just you and me.” Then a clumsy attempt at ghettoese. “What’s up?”
The tears burned again and his hand shook, but he took a deep breath and got it under control. “His shoes show up on the basketball hoop at school. It ain’t about no shoes. Take another look. Stolen shoes was just to throw you off, make you think it was robbery, close the case early.”
“Lincoln, why don’t you come forward? I’ll guarantee complete anonymity.”
“Don’t want my blood freezin’ in no back alley. And I ain’t got proof. I wasn’t there. But it ain’t about no Fila pair o’ shoes. Them shoes is hanging on the basketball hoop at school. See for yourself.”
He thumbed Detective Donaldson into oblivion.
Make Detective Donaldson get the shoes so he might find something, use some special technique to get beyond the Maytagging, see what he could see, maybe see Madmaxx’s ghost hanging around those shoes, telling Detective Donaldson who pulled the trigger.
His mother came upstairs. He wiped his tears away.
She came in and it was as if, through all his grief, he saw her for the first time: saw that she now had gray hair, and that there were chronic pouches of tiredness under her eyes, and that the buttons pulled too tightly on her Rent-A-Car work blazer, and that she wasn’t the young mother who had once taken him to the playground, but a woman whose years were slipping away one by one.
Her face was creased with worry. “You want to tell me what happened?” she said, pointing to his fat lip and black eye.
“Can’t talk about it, Mama.”
Couldn’t talk about it because he was scared. This wasn’t the playground anymore. It wasn’t some little kid pushing you, and you go crying to your mama about it. She looked powerless, with those tears in her eyes, like she was aching to help but couldn’t. He refused to talk because Papa Smurf didn’t fool around. Papa Smurf would make him pay. Would make his family pay. Stayed quiet because it was the right thing to do.
She finally padded downstairs, and he was left to his science homework, grade eleven chemistry, the molecular structure of ammonia, what happened when you added another oxygen; and he got caught up in the problem, even felt some of the old joy. Mr. Constanza said he was a bright kid, always told him if you were smart you could do anything.
He raised his eyebrows. He looked out the window.
If you were smart you could do anything.
Could he be smart about Madmaxx?
Could he solve the problem of Madmaxx like he was solving this one about ammonia?
And could he do it without winding up dead in a back alley somewhere?
Got to school the next day, Mr. Constanza’s class, first period, looked out the window and saw that the shoes were gone. Yellow police tape threaded the fence.
Dilbert came in, and Linc could see it in Dilbert’s eyes, the stare that told him he was next, that he had gone too far calling Detective Donaldson about the shoes. Who else could it be?
When Niveda got there, she observed him with new interest, the same way she had with Madmaxx, before Papa Smurf had felt compelled to use his sacred relic.
Linc was so scared he could hardly breathe.
Mr. Constanza was next. The teacher gave him a forsaken glance, one that told Linc that as much as he wanted to help, it was now beyond his control.
Yellow police tape. How could Detective Donaldson do this to him after his guarantee of anonymity?
He looked at the windowsill, his blood from the day before, and saw, tracked into the red, a pigeon’s footprint, three front toes, a long back one, the bird landing just as the blood had been freezing. It made him feel sick.
He went back to his science bench. If you were smart you could do anything. Madmaxx always parroted those words. Mr. Constanza was Madmaxx’s favorite teacher. But Linc didn’t feel smart. He felt stupid. He felt like he was already dead. All because of Detective Donaldson’s yellow tape.
Mr. Constanza told them to turn to page 183, they were going to look at sugars today.
Turned to page 183, but all he saw were Madmaxx’s shoes dangling from the basketball hoop, then saw his own hanging there as well, another trophy for Papa Smurf, big game hunter.
Class started, and fifteen minutes later Papa Smurf strutted in, a mean look in his eyes as he swiveled on Linc.
Linc was sick of it.
He sat up straight, didn’t look away, stared at Papa Smurf the same way Papa Smurf stared at him, mean and insolent. He wasn’t going to take it anymore. Madmaxx deserved more than a gutless wonder for a friend.