The Best American Mystery Stories 1998
- Автор: Ballard David, Bartels Scott
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin
- ISBN: 978-0-395-83586-9
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 1998». Краткое содержание книги:
The diverse styles and themes employed in this collection showcase an impressive array of talent certain to further the popularity of the genre. Already a bestseller in its first year, The Best American Mystery Stories, as evidenced by this year’s edition, promises to keep readers intrigued and coming back for more.
Carver sipped his beer and looked around. Muggy’s was a surprisingly long building with booths lining the walls beyond where the bar ended. On a shelf high above the bar was a stuffed alligator about five feet long, watching whatever went on with glass eyes that nonetheless seemed bright with evil cunning. There were box speakers mounted every ten feet or so around the edges of the ceiling, tilted downward and aimed at the customers as if they might fire bullets or dispense noxious gas. Right now they were silent. The only sound was the ticking of one of the half-dozen slowly revolving ceiling fans, stirring the air-conditioned atmosphere and moving tobacco smoke around. It occurred to Carver that the clientele in Muggy’s might have stopped talking to each other when he walked inside.
The bulky man who’d been watching Carver outside entered the lounge and swaggered toward him. He was about average height but very wide, with muscle rippling under his fat like energy trapped beneath his skin and trying to escape. He smiled thinly at Carver, then sat down on the stool next to him as if using the phone in succession had formed some sort of bond between them. When he smiled, the spider tattoo near his eye crinkled. Carver had seen real spiders do that after being sprayed with insecticide.
“You Mr. Fred Carver?” the man asked in a drawl that moved about as fast as the alligator above the bar.
“How did you guess?” Carver asked, continuing to stare straight ahead at the rows of bottles near the beer taps.
“Didn’t guess. I was told you checked in at the Glades Inn. I went and talked to the desk clerk, found out who you was.”
“Why?”
“Curious. Stranger here’s always news. Ain’t much happens to amuse us ’round these parts. We take our pleasure when we can.”
“You think I’m going to amuse you?”
“You got possibilities fer sure.”
Carver decided to meet this cretin head-on. “Ever hear of a man named Terry Frist?”
“Sure. Got his fool self killed and damn near et up by a ’gator a while back. Terrible thing.”
“Alligators usually kill their prey, then drag it back to their den at water’s edge where they hide it and let it rot until they can tear it apart easier with their teeth. The way I understand it, Terry Frist’s body was found on land.”
“Yeah. What was left of it. He was a cop, we found out later. From over in Del Moray. Say now, ain’t that where you’re from?”
Maybe not such a cretin. “It is,” Carver said, “but Frist and I didn’t know each other. I read in the newspaper about what happened to him here.”
“What is it you do for a livin’ there in Del Moray?”
“I’m in research. Decided to come here for the fishing.”
“Really? We ain’t known for the fishin’.”
“Didn’t I see a bait shop when I drove into town?”
“Oh yeah. Irv’s. Well, there’s some fishin’. More likely you’ll catch yourself a ’gator like that Frist fella did. Fishin’ suddenly becomes huntin’ when that happens, and you ain’t the hunter.”
The pockmarked bartender came over and asked what the big man was drinking.
“Nothin’.” He slid off his stool and looked hard at Carver. “Fishin’s no good this time of year at all. Not much reason for you to stay around town.”
“I like a challenge.”
“You’re more’n likely to get one if you go fishin’ in them swamp waters.”
“Can I rent an airboat anywhere around here?”
“Nope. Nowheres close, neither. Fella name of Ray Orb rents ’em some miles east, but the swamp’s too thick around these parts for airboats to get around in it. I think you best try someplace in an easterly direction.” He winked, then turned to leave.
“You didn’t mention your name,” Carver said.
“I.C. is what I’m called. Last name’s Unit. The I.C. stands for Intensive Care.” The spider crinkled again as if dying, and I.C. threw back his head and roared out a laugh. Carver watched him swagger out through the door, noticing that all the other customers averted their gazes.
“That his real name?” Carver asked the bartender when I.C. had left.
“He says it is. Nobody much wants to differ with him.”
“He as tough as he acts?”
“Oh yeah. Him and his buddies from over at Raiford.”
“Raiford? The state penitentiary?”
“That’s right. The three of ’em, I.C., Jake Magruder, and Luther Peevy, was in there together after they come down from Georgia and committed some heinous type crime. Some say it was murder. Luther Peevy, his folks died and left him a place nearby, so I guess that’s why they all settled in here ’bout a year ago.”
“I’ll bet the town was happy about that,” Carver said.
“This town was never happy,” the bartender said and moved away and began wiping down the bar with his gray towel.
Carver finished his beer, then walked around the town for a while before going into its only restaurant, Vanilla’s, for lunch, even though it was just eleven o’clock. He was hungry and he was here, and he didn’t know if the Glades Inn had a restaurant and didn’t want to find out. Crusty was probably the cook.
Though Vanilla’s was a weathered clapboard building that leaned on its foundation, it was surprisingly neat and clean inside. Small but heavy wooden tables were grouped evenly beneath a battery of ceiling fans rotating only slightly faster than the ones in Muggy’s. There was a small counter and double doors into the kitchen. Carver saw an old green Hamilton-Beach blender behind the counter and wondered if Vanilla’s sold milk shakes.
There were two men in white T-shirts and bib overalls at the counter, drinking coffee and eating pie. One of them, a redheaded man wearing a ponytail, turned on his stool, glanced at Carver, then went back to work on his apple pie. They seemed to be the only other warm bodies in Vanilla’s.
“’Nilla!” the redheaded man yelled. “You got yourself a customer.”
The double doors opened and a heavyset, perspiring woman in her fifties emerged from the kitchen. She had a florid complexion, weary blue eyes, and wispy gray hair that stuck out above one ear as if she’d slept too long on that side. She was wearing maroon slacks and a white blouse and apron and had a faint moustache. “Sit anywhere you want,” she told Carver in a hoarse voice as deep as a man’s.
He was aware of her looking at his cane as he limped to a table near the wall, well away from the counter. Fly-specked menus were propped between the salt and pepper shakers. He opened one and saw that the selection was limited.
Vanilla came over with an order pad and Carver asked for a club sandwich. Then he asked her if she served milk shakes and she said she did. He said chocolate.
“Why do people call you Vanilla?” he asked when she returned with his food and a thick milk shake, half in a glass, half remaining in the cold metal container that had fit onto the mixer.
“I used to be a blonde,” she said simply, then put his lunch on the table and went back into the kitchen.
Carver had eaten a few bites of the sandwich when he heard the door open and close. He looked in that direction and saw that a uniformed cop had come in, a short, obese, sixtyish man in a neatly pressed blue uniform with a gold badge on his chest.
He waddled directly to Carver’s table. “I’m Mangrove City Police Chief Jerry Gordon,” the cop said. He was one of those very fat men who breathe hard all the time, even when they speak.
Carver shook hands with Gordon and invited him to sit down.
“You’re Fred Carver from Del Moray,” Gordon said, settling his soft and wheezing bulk into the chair across the table from Carver.