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:
“Look,” she whispered. “Please, just look.”
Durant looked. It was one of the most totally erotic things he had ever seen. Her body writhed as her hands moved over it, caressing herself, offering to herself and to him.
But there was nothing. No, you’re wrong there, Jack, Durant told himself, there’s less than nothing. He watched dully now as Lace Armitage drove herself toward some sort of climax. Just as she was achieving it, the door from the deck opened and Randall Piers walked quietly into the room.
Piers stood watching his wife for a few seconds, a look of almost infinite sadness on his face. Sadness that mingled with affection and pity and love. After a moment he said very quietly, “Let’s go home, Lace.”
She turned toward him casually. “Oh, hello, sugar. You shouldn’t have bothered to come out.”
Piers stood waiting, a small, stiff half smile on his face. Finally, he nodded at Durant. Durant rose.
“My wife has a problem,” Piers said, trying not to sound embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” Durant said.
Lace picked up her pants and started putting them on. She had one leg into them when she stopped and looked at Durant. “You don’t have to worry about my husband, Mr. Durant,” she said. “He... well, he understands.”
Durant nodded.
The two men watched as Lace Armitage got dressed. Durant, staring at Lace, said to Piers, “Nothing happened.”
“No, of course not. I understand.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“It’s a difficult thing to understand really well, I suppose,” Piers said. “The first thing you have to do is accept it, and then you have to live with it.”
Lace Armitage was now dressed. Piers moved over to her, put his arm around her waist, and kissed her very gently on the cheek. “You all right?”
“Fine,” she said. “It just sort of got out of hand and I’m afraid I came bothering Mr. Durant.”
“No bother,” Durant said because he felt he had to say something.
“I’m sorry about... well, about everything,” Lace said. She turned to her husband. “Mr. Durant thinks he might have some news about Silk on Monday.”
“Is that right?” Piers said.
“Maybe,” Durant said. “There’s a chance.”
“We have that lunch date Monday, don’t we?” Piers said to Durant.
“That’s right.”
“Well, until Monday, then,” Piers said. He took his wife’s arm and gently guided her toward the door.
“Monday,” Durant said as they went through the door and closed it softly behind them.
Part Three
Chapter 28
A very wet, very unseasonable low-pressure system that had been lurking out in the Pacific for nearly a week finally decided to make its breakthrough late that Saturday night. By four o’clock the next morning, just as Quincy Durant’s uneasy doze was turning into fitful sleep, a hard rain began falling over much of Southern California. It was a Sunday, the nineteenth of June.
By the time Aggie Wu arose that morning in her house on Ninth Street in Santa Monica, the hard rain had turned into fine mist and fog. Aggie Wu immediately decided that it was a perfect day for a picnic at the beach.
It took a while to convince her husband of the suitability of her notion, which he described as goddamned weird, but by ten he had made the call to Durant and got the Wu clan invited to the beach. By eleven the huge picnic hamper was packed, and by noon Artie Wu was parking his Chrysler station wagon at the far end of the Paradise Cove parking lot, which, because of the weather, was virtually deserted.
Durant watched from the deck as the Wu family proceeded across the parking lot to the driveway and up to the deck — Wu in the lead, of course, his big stomach relaxed and poking proudly at his tent of a white sailcloth shirt, his face beaming; very much the family man; very much, indeed, the Patriarch.
Behind him came the two sets of twins, first the boys, then the girls, barely two, barely able to toddle. And last came Aggie Wu, tall and almost radiant in the Scotland-like weather, carrying the big picnic hamper. Since Artie Wu had created the delicacies that filled it, he had automatically assumed that his wife would do the carrying.
Durant greeted the twins by name, although it was sometimes hard for him to tell Angus and Arthur apart. The girls were easier. One was pretty; the other one, prettier.
“They’ve got a poem for you, Quincy,” Aggie Wu said as she placed the hamper on the redwood table.
“Hell of a poem,” Artie Wu said. “They picked it up from one of the neighbor kids.” He nodded encouragingly at his two sons.
It was all the encouragement they needed. In unison they chanted in voices tinged with an odd Spanish-Scottish-American accent:
“Like it?” Aggie Wu said.
“The rhyme’s a little off, but the meter’s pretty good,” Durant said. “And they’ve learned some new Spanish,” Aggie Wu said. “Say your new Spanish for Quincy, Angus.”
Angus Wu, the elder son, the one who, if things turned out just right, might someday be both Emperor of China and King of Scotland, smiled sweetly at Durant and said, “Chinga tu madre, loco cabrón.”
“And the same to you, pal,” Durant said.
“Come on, kids,” Aggie Wu said. “Let’s go take a walk along the beach so we can be cold and wet and chilled like God intended people to be.”
Wu and Durant watched the mother and her bundled-up children head down toward the beach. Wu then picked up the hamper and followed Durant inside. Wu put the hamper down and poured two mugs of coffee from the big gallon pot and handed Durant one.
“You look like you could use a little something in yours,” he said, studying Durant.
“That bad, huh?”
“It shows. Hard night?”
Durant nodded.
“I’ve got big ears.”
“I don’t know,” Durant said. “It’s sort of kiss-and-tell stuff.”
“What’d you do,” Wu said as he moved into the living room, “pick up some broad?”
“Not exactly.”
“One picked you up?” Wu said, sitting down on the couch. “Something like that.”
Artie Wu shook his head in a gesture of kindly commiseration. “And it turned out as usual.”
“As usual.”
“Bad?”
“Yeah. Bad.”
“Who was she?”
Durant debated whether to tell Wu. It might help a little to talk about it. Sometimes it did, and of course, he knew it would go no further. It wasn’t something that he wanted to go any further.
“Lace Armitage,” he said.
Artie Wu lifted his face heavenward and flung his arms out beseechingly. “Oh, Lordy, let it happen to me!”
Durant told Wu what had happened, adding nothing, editing much. “And then came her big moment—”
“And you sitting there not even able to get your tongue hard.”
“Yeah. Well, who should walk in on us but the husband.”
“Piers?”
“That’s the only one she’s got.”
“Christ. What happened?”
“Nothing. He seemed used to it — or as used to that kind of thing as you can ever get, I suppose. He seemed more sorry for her than anything else.”
Artie Wu produced a cigar and lit it with his usual ceremony. “I guess for a woman like that you could put up with just one hell of a lot.”
“I guess.”
Wu examined Durant several moments. “You still want to go through with it?”