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:
The chief of police was seated behind his desk when the two jailers brought Wu and Durant in. Ploughman stared at his prisoners for a moment and then dismissed their jailers with a go-away nod. After that he gestured for Durant and Wu to sit down in the two chairs that were pulled up to his desk.
Ploughman silently studied the two men for a moment or two longer, then smiled yellowishly, opened a desk drawer, and brought out a bottle of Gordon’s gin and three Kraft cheese glasses.
“You drink gin?” he said.
“We drink gin,” Durant said.
“Warm?”
“Any way at all.”
Ploughman poured about two ounces into each glass and slid two of them across the desk one at a time. He then picked up two thick manila envelopes and tossed them toward Wu and Durant.
“Your stuff,” he said, and took a swallow of gin.
Wu opened his envelope, found a cigar, and stuck it into his mouth. He then transferred his wallet and keys and change to his pockets. After that he had a drink of gin and then lit his cigar. Durant had a drink first, then transferred his possessions to his pockets, but not before counting the money in his wallet. After that he lit a Pall Mall. Ploughman watched them idly.
“I got curious,” Ploughman said.
Wu nodded. “Oh?”
“So I did a little checking. You two are a couple of cuties. I had to call San Francisco and then some guy at home in Washington.” He shook his head gloomily. “Nobody in L.A.’s ever heard of you.”
“Why didn’t you just talk to the guy who told you to roust us?” Durant said.
Ploughman eyed Durant thoughtfully, swiveling a little in his chair. “Now, that’s a pretty good question,” he said, and swung around to check on his view again. “You know what’s wrong with this town?” he said after a moment. He was still staring out the window at the Pacific, which was beginning to turn purple in the late-afternoon sun. Or perhaps just dark blue.
“You want a list?” Wu said.
“Nah, just the main thing.”
“What?”
“It’s too skinny,” Ploughman said, and spun back around. “I’m not kidding,” he added in response to the doubting looks that he got from Wu and Durant. “It’s shaped like a sharp stick that somebody stuck up L.A.’s rear end. Now, when they founded it, all the business section got built down by the beach. And behind the business section came the rich folks’ section, then the middle class, and then the poor folks. The poor folks got stuck as far away from the ocean as possible, of course. Well, you know what happened then?”
“What?” Durant said.
“The niggers started moving in, that’s what. Then the Mex, and then the Chinese and the Japanese and the Koreans and God knows what all. So the whites, at least the rich ones, took off for the suburbs or Balboa or Newport or some place, and then all those shopping centers started going up and the downtown section just went to hell, and what you got left here is a town without any industry to speak of, a business district that’s almost a ghost town, a lot of folks who’re poor or damn near that way, and a crime rate that’s practically out of sight. Sound familiar?”
“Very,” Wu said.
Ploughman nodded. “It’s happening all over the country. But what you’ve really got here, if you look at it from just the right angle, is a very ripe, very juicy plum.”
“So who’s going to pick it?” Durant said.
“You get right to the point, don’t you, Slim?”
“He’s very direct,” Wu said. “Honest, too.”
“Halfway,” Ploughman said.
“Halfway what?” Durant said.
“You guys are about halfway honest is the word I get, which means in this town they might put up a statue to you.”
“Bent, huh?” Wu said.
“Outa shape.”
“But ripe, you said.”
“Juicy.”
“So who’s going to pick it?” Durant asked again.
It took a while for Ploughman to answer. He had to smile first — a big. Wide, yellow, nasty smile.
“Me,” he said, and went on smiling.
“Aaah, so,” Wu said in his best Chinese voice. Or perhaps Japanese. “Tell us, Chief,” Durant said.
Ploughman spun around in his chair to check on the ocean again. “They brought me out from Jersey to be their tame police chief,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you who they are, do I?”
“Simms?” Wu said.
“He fronts for them.”
“And sort of runs things,” Durant said.
Ploughman nodded at the ocean and then turned around to face Wu and Durant again. “And sort of runs things. Well, I get out here and, by God, I like it. I like all this sunshine and the half-naked girlies in their bikinis and good stuff like that. So I figured I’d better lock myself in. But to do that you’ve got to have a base — a political base; and you know what?”
“You couldn’t find it,” Wu said.
Ploughman nodded slowly. “You nailed it, friend. There was one in the process of being built, but it went to pieces when the guy who was building it got himself killed.”
“Congressman Ranshaw?” Durant said.
“Yeah. Congressman Ranshaw. He used to be a cop too. A good one, so I hear. Smart. His wife killed him.”
Artie Wu blew a smoke ring. “Did she?”
Ploughman stared at him. “You hear any different?”
“Maybe.”
“You got any hard evidence, friend, you’re committing a felony by withholding it.”
Wu blew another smoke ring. “No hard evidence.”
“Just talk, huh?”
“Idle chatter. Very idle.”
“Tell us some more about the plum, Chief,” Durant said.
Ploughman nodded and smiled again. “Let me ask you this: You know what makes a city work?”
“Politics,” Durant said.
“And you know what politics is? Favors. That’s all. Favors. You do something for me and I’ll do something for you. You vote for me and I’ll get your idiot brother-in-law a job with the city. Or on a higher level, let’s you and me do each other a favor and gang up on Russia. Favors. Cities used to work, you know. Look at Chicago.”
“Daley,” Wu said.
“And before Daley, Kelly-Nash. Kansas City, the Pendergast machine. Crump in Memphis. Boss Hague in Jersey. I could go on. But let’s get back to Pelican Bay. Here you got a town of about a hundred and fifty thousand. Not a big town, but not little. And most of ’em are registered Democrats — I mean the ones who bother to register at all. And what do they want? Well, they want jobs, or to get on welfare, or to get their mother on welfare, or get the street light fixed, or their property-tax mess straightened out. Favors. That’s what they want. Favors. So who can they go to — the precinct committeeman? Who the fuck’s he? They don’t know. The ward boss? Never heard of him. The city councilman? Forget it. But what about the cop, the one who walks the beat? — and you can walk a beat in this town; it’s small enough. Suppose the cop on the beat was the guy who could get the pothole filled or Grandpa into the veterans’ hospital. Well, the folks’d be grateful, right? So grateful that when election time came around, they wouldn’t mind voting for who the cop on the beat recommended. So here you get a town with maybe a hundred thousand eligible voters and you get maybe eighty percent or eighty-five percent of them registered Democrat and then get damn near ninety percent of them to vote. And vote right. So up in Sacramento when election time comes around, the pols take a look at the map and say, What about Pelican Bay, what can we come out of there with? So somebody says, Maybe we’d better check with the man down there and see what he wants, because he’s got a lock on eighty, maybe ninety thousand votes and in a close election they could just make the difference — except they don’t talk like that, of course.”