The Best American Mystery Stories 2002
- Автор: Грейди Джеймс, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2002
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-12494-7
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2002». Краткое содержание книги:
She said nothing.
Then told him: “This here with you is the closest I’ve got to that.”
Told him: “You say the one special thing you can do is boxing. The one special thing I can do is make you love me.”
Billie curled into a ball, away from him and into him at the same time, her head pulling away on the sheet from his kisses even as her round hips pushed back against his loins, pressed against him, rubbing, and Gene gave himself to her.
Nine nights before the fight Doyle threw open their door, stood backlit in the entrance as Billie jerked the sheet over her nakedness and Gene sneaked one bare foot down to the floor.
“Wake up and dress, palooka. I need a driver.”
“That’s not my job.”
“The hophead’s too shaky, so it’s either you or the woman. If it’s her, the coming back to you will take a good while longer. That’s okay with me.”
Gene made the time as midnight when he drove Doyle away from the farmhouse.
“They say a woman weakens a boxer,” said Doyle. “Steals his legs. His wind.”
“Only way to find out is to get me a sparring partner. Why don’t you volunteer?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, punchy?”
“I’m just doing the job I said I’d do.”
“No. Tonight you’re driving. Like I say you’ll do.”
Doyle made him take a back road into Shelby. Music came from the joints on Front Street. Doyle had him park on an alley slope up from the drop-lit rear door of Taylor’s bank. “Shut off the lights and engine, but keep your hand on the starter.”
“We meeting the man?”
“Might say that if you weren’t supposed to keep shut up.” Doyle bent over to hide the strike of a kitchen match that let him check his watch: ten minutes to one. Doyle puffed out the blue flame. Sulphur smoke soured the darkness. He eased out the passenger door, flapped his suit coat so it was loose.
“When I come running, you start the engine. Keep the lights out.” Doyle crept to a shed where the shadows hid him from the alley below, stood there like a rock.
Gene knew time in three-minute increments. In the middle of the sixth round, way down the slope, between two Main Street buildings, Gene spotted the hulking figure of a man walking toward the alley. The man stepped out of the passageway: Sheriff Otis.
From that distance, the car with Gene was an innocent shape, one of the new vehicles crowding into town for the oil rigs or the railroad spur they were building for the chartered trains from back East. Even if the ex-Texas Ranger spotted the car, its engine was off, its doors were closed. Shadows cloaked Doyle. Sheriff Otis walked along the flat stone wall of a building and into the cone of light dropping down over the bank’s rear door. Otis wrapped his gun hand around the bank’s doorknob to be sure it was locked tight.
Gene barely heard Doyle’s whisper: “Draw!”
Saw the shadowed man’s solo hand clear his suit coat and snap straight out toward Otis.
Saw the flash of the pistol and heard its roar as a blast of crimson graffitied the bank’s cement wall below the doorknob and Otis flipped into the air and crashed to the alley.
Doyle leapt into the car and they sped to the back road south.
“Got the son of a bitch just like I wanted!” yelled Doyle.
“Sucker shot!”
“Depends on which side of the trigger you’re on. Besides, I could have put the pill through his black heart, but instead he’ll get to gimp around and play the local hero.”
“What makes you so kind?”
“A dead lawman brings heat from everywhere. A cripple is a joke.”
“Hope he doesn’t bleed out.”
They hit a bump.
Doyle said: “Those are the risks you take.”
Three nights later, six days to the fight, Taylor drove out, told Doyle: “Perfect job. The town fathers gave a local guy the badge. Otis is parked in his house on the east end, sitting on the porch with his gun on his lap, his leg cemented up, watching the trains go by, and cursing like a son of a bitch. Somehow everybody’s talking about two guys with Texas accents who blew into town and now can’t be found anywhere. Almost like they never existed, but they must have been the ones. Amman’s past come back to haunt him. Happens all the time.”
“Will he walk again?” asked Gene.
“Who cares?” said Doyle. “The law dog’s not gonna be there to figure what he can’t see, he’s not gonna be able to run after no robbers.”
“You will have to run,” said the toad to Gene. “In all the confusion, our locals won’t piece it together but, quick enough, they’ll take it to the real lawman. He’ll figure your part, especially since he already’s got a lead on Doyle. But Doyle’s good shot bought you half a day at least.
“After the heist, this is the first place they’ll look. Doyle’ll plant a burned map of Mexico in the trash ashes. But you go east to that farm where we met. Cut up the cash. Hide my share in the lockbox under the living room floor. Harry, leave the money you owe. Doyle will peel off extra bills for expenses. There’ll be scissors, hair dye. A razor for your mustache, Gene. If you’re banged up from the fight, there’ll be a sling for your arm and doctor’s papers about a farm accident. Only lie when you have to. A close trim, a henna, and Billie’ll look respectable. The shed has a change-up car. Alberta plates. Harry knows the bootlegger trail into Canada. The four of you’ll hit that whistle-stop depot at Aden before the evening papers. Doyle’ll have train tickets to Vancouver for Mr. and Mrs. Louis Dumas. Doyle figures he’ll like New York: Anybody can be anybody there. Harry, you can help Doyle drive to the big time or he’ll let you out on the way, your choice.”
“What about you?” said Gene.
“I stay here to keep messing with the minds of our friends and neighbors. A year from now, I regretfully leave this paradise for a better job. Six months later, I vanish a free man.”
“What’s to stop us from keeping all the money?” said Gene. “You won’t go to the cops.”
“You’re too smart to risk running from my insurance men plus hiding from the law.” Taylor smiled. “Besides, you and the Larsons are fundamentally honest people. A banker learns how to judge that real quick.”
That moonlit night as she floated on his chest, Billie whispered: “Would Doyle double-cross our banker?”
“No. Not as long as it’s all working. They’re both too clever for that.”
“What about us?” whispered Billie.
“Yeah.” A breath made his chest rise and fall. “Any way you look at it, what about us.”
On the first day of July the thermometer said it was 92 degrees in the shade. Doyle was gone; Harry was stoned. After his morning run and workout. Billie stretched Gene out on their bed, rubbed him down, lay beside him like every morning. They napped. Something woke Gene before the ticking alarm clock. The window glowed like molten white gold. He shielded his eyes and shuffled to the edge of the fluttering curtains.
Out there. By the barn. Doyle closing the trunk of his Ford and carrying a shovel back into the barn where maybe it hadn’t been hanging that morning.
That night, Gene told Billie: “Tomorrow I need you to go to town. With Doyle. If Harry comes, even better, but you’ve got to get Doyle away from here and keep him away for at least half a day. Say it’s for supplies or whatever, but you’ve got to get me free of him.” She nodded in the darkness, and he hated them both for the creeping fear.
The next day, the second day of July, two days before the fight, he watched as Billie drove away from the farm toward Shelby. With Doyle. Doyle alone.
Gene ran to the barn, found Harry slumped on a stool. Harry sat in that manure oven, his shirt sleeves buttoned tight on his wrists, flies crawling untroubled on that face where the eyes clung to open above a slack-jawed smile. Gene said: “What kind of man are you?”