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:
“Where’re you gonna be about ten or ten-thirty?”
“Anywhere you say,” Wu said.
“My place?”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Wu said.
Overby nodded. “If I’m not there, the kid here’ll let you in or I’ll leave word for somebody to.”
“What about Eddie’s ID?” Wu said. “Any problem there?”
Overby shook his head. “We picked it up this morning. It’s a nice job.”
“How much?” Durant said.
“One thousand even.”
“Jesus,” Artie Wu said. “I can remember when you could get a whole set for three hundred.”
“Not with credit cards and a Washington Post press card,” Overby said.
“What’s that name you’re going to use, Eddie?” Durant said.
“Max,” McBride said. “Anthony C. Max, and maybe, in a couple of hours or even maybe a couple of days, you guys are gonna get around to telling me what the fuck this is all about.”
“Five minutes, Eddie,” Durant said. “That’s all you’ve got to wait.”
“Show him your stuff, kid,” Overby said.
McBride took a wallet out of the breast pocket of his jacket. From the wallet he extracted a folding, accordionlike plastic case and holding it up, let it unfold itself as the nine or ten connected compartments tumbled down toward the floor.
Overby rose, took the case, and showed it almost proudly to Durant and Wu. “Maryland driver’s license, Social Security card, American Express, Carte Blanche, Gulf Oil, DC. public library card — I thought that up — and the press card.”
Wu examined the press card carefully. “Is this really the way it looks?”
“Who the hell knows?” Overby said. “What this guy did was go down and buy a copy of the Post somewhere and then take its name, the way it is in Old English type here, and shoot it and then ink it in good and reduce it. He had a press card that he’d got somehow from the Sacramento Bee and he used that as a kind of model and then got a color Polaroid shot of the kid here and put that in and then laminated the whole thing with plastic. I think it looks damn good.”
Wu looked at Durant, who nodded. Wu handed the folding case back to McBride and then looked at Overby. “One more thing, Otherguy.”
“What?”
“We need a couple of pieces.”
Overby’s face went very still. Only his eyes moved as they flicked from Wu to Durant and then back to Wu. “Well, now,” he said. “If you two guys need pieces, how about me and the kid here?”
“You’ve already got one, Otherguy,” Durant said. “It’s a belly gun, a thirty-eight, and when you carry it, you carry it cute — around in the small of your back.”
Overby’s hand went around to the small of his back and touched something through his jacket. “You remember,” he said.
“Yeah, we remember.”
“What’ve you got in mind?” Overby said.
“Pistols,” Durant said. “Revolvers. No smaller than a thirty-two, no larger than a thirty-eight.”
“There’s a guy over in Hollywood that—”
“Otherguy,” Wu interrupted.
“What?”
“We don’t want to know.”
Overby nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. Okay. But I’m running a little short.”
Wu sighed. “How much?”
“Five hundred.”
Wu sighed again, took out his roll with the oversized silver paper clip, peeled off ten fifties, and handed them to Overby. “Make sure they’ve got firing pins in them and everything.”
“Firing pins,” Overby said as if making a note, and stuck the money into his pocket.
“Just make sure they shoot. And get some bullets for them, too.”
“How many rounds you want?”
“Just enough to load them,” Wu said. “We’re not starting any war.”
“What the hell are we starting?” McBride said. “You guys all need pieces, but I don’t. I’m going to be the boy reporter, which I know fuck all about being. I think your five minutes are up, and if I don’t hear something that makes sense in one minute flat, I walk.”
“Okay, Eddie,” Durant said. “We’re going to get to you right now.”
“You know, the kid’s got a point,” Overby said. “He and I’ve sort of been talking things over.”
“About what?” Durant said.
“Well, you know, you guys’ve got your deal going, and I mean, you don’t have to tell us every last detail, but we would kind of like to get a look inside.”
“How’d you like a peek at two million dollars?” Durant said.
Again, Overby’s face went still. “Cut how many ways?”
“Four,” Wu said. “Possibly five.”
“Even?”
Durant nodded. “Even.”
Overby looked at McBride. “What do you think, kid? With that kind of money we could maybe do what we were talking about.”
“What’s that?” Wu said.
“Well, I’m not getting any younger and I could probably use an associate — a partner, really — and the kid here has got all the right moves, so he and I were sort of thinking about going in together out there when this is all over.” Overby nodded toward the Pacific Ocean, again indicating that out there could be anything from Seattle to Singapore.
“Two million,” McBride said. “That’s a pretty familiar figure.”
“It’s the same one, Eddie,” Durant said.
“So what do I have to do?”
“You have to look for somebody.”
“Where?”
“We’ll know tomorrow morning, probably around nine,” Wu said. “It may be an address, it may be just a neighborhood.”
“And what do I do when I find whoever I’m looking for?”
“You call us,” Durant said.
McBride nodded thoughtfully. “And that’s all you’re going to tell me, isn’t it?”
“For now,” Wu said.
“Except who I’m going to be looking for. You’re going to tell me that.”
“Silk Armitage,” Durant said.
The name made McBride look down at the floor. For several long moments he seemed to be studying the intricate pattern in the Oriental rug. When he looked up his face was set, thoughtful. “If I’m looking for her,” he said, “that means she doesn’t want to be found.”
“That’s right, Eddie,” Wu said. “She doesn’t want to be found.”
Chapter 30
At 3.30 p.m. on that damp, cool Sunday afternoon, a failed pimp turned part-time car thief was killing an otherwise dull day by bar hopping down the Pacific Coast Highway. The car thief’s name was Joe Crites, and he had already been in three bars by the time he hit the Sneaky Pete in Venice and ordered a Virgin Mary.
There wasn’t much of a crowd in the place, and Crites had grown bored and was almost ready to leave when Gobie Salimei, one of the Sneaky Pete’s three owners, came down to Crites’s end of the bar, leaned on it, and offered his opinion of the weather.
“You’d think, Joey, on a day like this people’d be flocking in here, wouldn’t you?”
Crites looked around and shrugged. “You got a crummy joint here, Gobie. They ain’t gonna flock in here rain or shine.”
“Maybe I oughta get a string of ladies and let ’em work outa here.”
“It’s an idea, except the oney kind you’re gonna get are gonna be dogs and they’d drive more bidness away than they’d bring in.”
“You think so, huh?”
“I know so.”
Gobie Salimei nodded gloomily. Then he thought of something that might elevate him a little in the bankrupt pimp’s estimation. It was information, inside stuff, and you never could tell. Crites knew a lot of people.