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:
Salimei shrugged. “Now and then.”
“Well, you ain’t anymore, because I just fired her ass tonight.”
Chapter 27
The knock on Durant’s door came just after midnight. It was more of a light, hesitant tap than a knock. Durant closed the book he had been half reading and turned off the small Sony television set with its old movie that he had been half watching. Then he rose, went to the door, and switched on the deck lights. Lace Armitage was smiling at him uncertainly through the door’s glass.
Durant opened the door. “Well, come in.”
“I saw your light,” she said as she came in. “Isn’t that what they always say, ‘I saw your light’?”
“Who’re they?” Durant said.
“I don’t know. Just they, I reckon. Those who come calling at midnight. Actually, I’ve been standing out there for fifteen minutes trying to get up the necessary nerve.”
“To do what?”
“To say ‘I saw your light.’ ” Lace looked around hesitantly, as though not at all sure what she should do next. Durant asked her to sit down. She chose the suede armchair where she had sat before. She was wearing dark green pants and tan sandals and a thin white velour sweater-shirt. The nipples of her breasts seemed to thrust and poke at the thin fabric.
Durant, who was still standing, said, “Can I get you anything? A drink, maybe?”
“Will you have one?”
“Sure. Scotch?”
“And a little water.”
Durant made the drinks in the kitchen and carried them back into the living room. He handed Lace hers and then sat down on the couch. Lace brought a box of Shermans out of her sweater-shirt pocket, extracted one and lit it quickly, almost nervously, with the table lighter, not waiting for Durant to make an offer to light it, apparently not even aware that he might.
Then, remembering something, perhaps her manners, she offered him the box. He shook his head and thought, Well, she’s got the drink and the cigarette, the props; now she can get on with the scene.
Lace sipped her drink, took some of the cigarette’s smoke far down into her lungs, blew it out, and said, “Anything about my sister yet?”
“Monday maybe.”
“Really?” Durant couldn’t decide whether the interest and excitement in her voice were real or merely acting. With her it was hard to tell — probably even for her.
“There’s a slight chance that we might learn something Monday, but very slight. Don’t count on it. That’s why I didn’t call you. Or your husband.” You do remember him, don’t you, Durant thought, the distinguished-looking guy with all the money?
“I’m very worried about my sister,” Lace said.
Durant nodded.
Lace smiled — a wry, rather lopsided smile which didn’t at all mar her beauty. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I believe you’re worried about your sister.”
“But you don’t believe that’s why I came here tonight.”
“You saw my light,” Durant said.
“That’s right. I saw your light and I started wondering.”
“About what?”
“About whether you still have those clean sheets on your bed.”
Durant nodded slowly, staring at her. “You want to fuck, is that it?”
“Yes,” she said, looking away from him, “that’s it.”
“Why me?” he said. “Why not your husband — or the pool man?”
“He’s not available,” she said, still looking away, this time toward the glass wall and beyond that the ocean.
“Your husband?”
She looked at him then with a direct, level gaze. “The pool man. Or the gardener. Or the chauffeur. Or even the guy who delivers the booze.”
“It’s like that, huh?” Durant said after a moment.
“It’s exactly like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lace’s face softened. “You sound like you really are.”
“I am.”
Something passed over her face, something that seemed both bleak and stiff. “Well, you don’t have to be sorry; all you have to do is take me to bed.”
“That’s partly what I’m sorry about.”
“You mean you won’t?”
Durant shook his head slowly, even sadly. “It’s not that I won’t.” He paused. “I can’t.”
Lace’s eyes went wide. “Are you saying — I mean, what you’re saying is that you can’t get it up?” There were sorrow and real compassion in her tone, and Durant decided that this time she wasn’t acting.
“That’s one way to put it,” he said. “A little inelegant maybe, but graphic.”
“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry,” she said, and there was no acting this time either. Only more genuine sorrow and more compassion.
Durant grinned. “It’s sort of funny. I mean, you and I together are sort of funny, if you go in for heavy irony.”
Lace didn’t smile. “How long have you — well — had it?”
“You don’t have it. It just happens. It’s been about five years now, a little more.”
“Did something, well, happen to you?” Lace’s interest didn’t sound prurient to Durant. She sounded more like a doctor who was anxious to prescribe a remedy once he diagnosed the disease.
“I think so. At least, I can date it from a certain time, a certain event.”
“What?”
“There was a girl, or a woman rather, whom I was rather fond of. A French girl — woman. I got her into a place in Cambodia during the war where she shouldn’t have been. She was a writer, a journalist. She got killed because of my stupidity and carelessness, and since then God has been punishing me.”
“You don’t really believe that,” Lace said.
“About God?”
She nodded, very, very seriously.
“No, but I like to blame it on somebody.”
“Have you seen anybody about it — a doctor, I mean?”
“Have you?”
Lace looked away again. “Yes. A lot of them. It doesn’t do much good does it? They don’t have any answers or any cures either. And they try to be so fucking objective and above it all and God-like, but they still make you feel like what’s really wrong with you is that you’re just a nasty little girl with rotten morals.”
“It sounds rough,” Durant said.
“At least I can still do it. God, I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t. Did you — well — try much?”
“Incessantly.”
“Was it bad?”
Durant nodded. “Pretty bad.”
She looked out toward the ocean again. “Would you like to try with me?”
“It wouldn’t do any good.”
“I know a lot of — well — tricks.” She looked at him almost beseechingly, and the only apparent desire in her eyes was a desire to help. Still looking at him, she unbuttoned her sweater and slipped it off. She ran her hands over her breasts. “You like that? Some men like to watch me do that.”
Durant took it all in clinically. He commanded his brain to send some signal down to his groin. And when the command didn’t work, he willed it. But there was no response, only an indifferent emptiness that still managed to ache. Durant shook his head slowly at Lace, who smiled at him encouragingly, ran her tongue over her sensual lips, and with her eyes promised all kinds of unimaginable delights. Durant wanted to believe. He wanted to very much, but he simply couldn’t.
Lace unbuttoned the top of her pants and slipped them off quickly. Now she was completely naked. She rose and moved over to Durant and stood before him, moving her hands slowly over her body. Durant swallowed.
“You want me to talk to you?” she said. “You want me to tell you things?”
“No,” Durant said, leaning back on the couch and closing his eyes. “It’s not you, but it’s no good. I’m sorry — it’s just not going to work.”