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:
Dempsey hit Gene with eyes that were black ice and saw everything about him, the sheen of sweat, the glint of brass around his neck, the blood splattered on Gene’s chest. I’m taller than him, thought Gene as they drew close. That flicker of arrogance whispered to Dempsey. His gaze jabbed Gene’s soul and Gene knew: never had a day that good, never will.
The paltry paid crowd roared when they saw the true champion emerge into the sunlight.
The lone guard on the door to the walled-in area for the dressing and other rooms told Gene’s crew: “Not a single chartered train came! And everybody else is still hanging outside!”
“Nothing changes!” hissed Doyle as they hurried to the pine-planked sweat chamber the promoters grandly called a dressing room.
Inside, door closed. Harry threw a bucket of water over Gene, wiped him with a towel. Kept muttering: “Great fighter, you’re a great fighter, great fight. Not me, you. ’S’ thing to be.” From a duffel bag, Doyle pulled pillowcases cut for masks and money hauling, his .45 shoulder rig, a suit jacket. He tossed revolvers to Harry and Gene.
“Don’t worry, Champ. They ain’t loaded.”
Gene said: “If the trains didn’t come—”
“We take what’s there!” said Doyle. “You better pray there’s enough!”
Gene had only his shirt left to button when a thunderous creak! rolled through the wooden arena. The room around them bent and screamed. From outside came a great roar. Three would-be holdup men ran into the dungeon of rooms built under the area. The dim hall was empty. They ran to the corridor door. No guard. They hurried up the ramp into a blast of sunlight. Dempsey and Gibbons danced in the ring for Round One, but the great rolling-herd roar of a thousand voices caught even their attention.
In they came from every entryway. Men in suits and straw hats, work boots and denim. Women in long skirts and yellow scarves. Umbrellas and pocket flasks. Clothes ripped by the barbed wire and turnstiles they’d torn down to storm inside for free. Damn the big money they’d never have: no one would keep them from their championship.
“Look!” Harry pointed to a corridor a hundred feet away. A toad of a man, his straw hat askew, hopped back and forth in front of a stampeding phalanx, his hands outstretched to hold them back, screaming so loud that even Gene and his crew heard him: “Go back! You didn’t pay! You’ve got to pay! Everybody’s got to pay!”
Laughter drowned him out as he spun into the ranks of wild-faced men and cackling women. Gene lost sight of Taylor as the crowd swirled. The banker popped out, pressed against a railing as elbows and shoulders slammed his back. The toad’s face was a purple moon with craters for eyes and the scream of his mouth. Taylor’s hands clutched his chest like he’d been punched, clawed at his throat fighting a strangler. A well-wisher poured amber liquid from a pocket flask into the uptight banker’s maw. Taylor choked, gurgled. He flopped over the rail as the crowd surged into the arena. Revelers plucked the banker from the rail and dragged him along until he sprawled into a hatless toad heap on a bench, reeking of bootleg whiskey like he was dead drunk, but Gene knew the toad was just dead, that he’d bake in the sun until the cleaning crew and newspaper eulogies told about an innocent casualty of championship fever.
“Gone.” Harry trembled as he stared at the chaos. “ ’Sall gone to crazy!”
“Come on!” yelled Doyle as the crowd of twelve thousand gate crashers scrambled in and the bell rang the end of Dempsey-Gibbons Round One. “We’ve got a job to do!”
“No good,” muttered Harry as Doyle marched them back down inside the bowels of the arena, past the unguarded corridor door. “Nothing’s no good ’less you’re a fighter.”
“Shut up!” snapped Doyle as they hurried back to Gene’s dressing room.
Harry plucked at Doyle with a trembling hand: “No good, you’re no good, this is all gone no good and we know what you’re going to do!”
Shut up, Harry! willed Gene.
Harry chose to fight for the first time in his life. He jumped on Doyle: “Get him now, Gene! Don’t wait!”
Doyle threw Harry into Gene. Gene shoved Harry back toward Doyle as that man’s right hand whirled. A heartbeat before the crowd outside roared the start of Round Two, Gene heard snick and saw light flash in the dim wooden cavern. Crimson misted the air between Harry and Doyle. Harry spun to show Gene his new wet red collar. The inertia of the switchblade slash turned Harry all the way around to face Doyle again. Doyle pushed the dying man aside. Harry fell between wooden beams to lie underneath the arena until the demolition crew found him two weeks later, long after insects and animals finished with his flesh. The law chalked up his bones to a worker who’d gone missing after cops ran two Wobbly labor organizers off the construction site, one of those tragic industrial accidents that happens all the time.
Doyle stabbed at the boxer but Gene still had the jazz. He batted the knife out of Doyle’s hand with a left slap and slammed his right fist straight into the killer’s jaw. Fifteen rounds earlier, that punch might have put Doyle out for good: now it dropped him out but breathing.
Finish him— No! Gene dragged the moaning man to his dressing room, threw him inside, and slammed the door: no lock. He wedged the knife in the doorjamb and snapped off the blade.
Doyle won’t be out for long. The wedged door won’t hold him long. Think! Won’t let us get away, we’re witnesses, ’n’ he doesn’t need no other reason than rage.
But fist he’ll go to the money. Try to feed his money hunger first, then revenge.
Gene ran to the counting room. Get there first! Tell them Doyle’d gone crazy! Killed Harry! Was going to hold them up. With a clerk, maybe two. maybe guns with bullets, they could ambush Doyle and the clerks would be witnesses to Gene’s story, to his being a hero, to him and Billie being innocent, safe, fr—
The counting room door stood ajar.
The crowd roared as Gibbons split open an old cut over Dempsey’s eve in Round Four.
A short guy in a good suit stood in the counting room. Four chairs behind the long table were empty. Notebooks and tills were strewn everywhere. But no silver dollars. No stacks of greenbacks. The short guy stared at the big man in the doorway whose hand dangled a revolver.
“If you’ve come for money, you’re too late,” said the short guy. “Someone beat you to what little of it they had. Got them to give it up to him. Then once the bust-in riot started, the clerks knew it was over and they all left to see the big fight.”
“You’re Dempsey’s manager. Jack Kearns.”
“Guilty. And with that gun in your hand, you’re a man looking for trouble.”
“Doesn’t have any bullets.”
“A man with a gun and no bullets is a man who’s in trouble.” Kearns squinted. “I saw you fight, Mallette. You held back. Got size, speed, strength, technique. But give it up. You got no future as a real champ. Inside you there’s no killer.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Not likely. What did they promise you for winning?”
“Wasn’t about the money.”
“For you, probably not. But how much to be the champ of this town?”
“A thousand.”
“They cheaped you. You’ll never get it anyway. This crazy day cheated them, too. They’ll all go bust.” Kearns held a fold of bills toward Gene. “Every winner deserves a purse. Five hundred, and keep this between you and me. Call yourself lucky to get it and get gone before your half-assed manager comes looking for his cut.”