The Best American Mystery Stories 2005
- Автор: Хиггинс Джордж, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51744-2
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
“Fish like that will take up a lot of wall space.”
“They’d caught it. before.”
“What?”
“Edna said that when they got it onboard they recognized the marlin. Scars, the shape of its dorsal. They were sure of it, couple years ago in the Dry Tortugas.”
“That’s one for Ripley.”
“She said Whitey was pretty upset about it.”
“Killing the fish?”
Emmett nods. “Either that or that it was the same one. He was always saying, ‘I like to beat ’em, not beat ’em to death.’”
“Stick a hook in your lip, drag a quarter mile of line through the ocean for a couple hours, what’s he think is gonna happen?” Rut shakes his head. “Moody bastards, fishermen. That Hemingway—”
“Whitey never cared for Hemingway. He liked the dog fella—”
“Dog fella.”
“Call of the Wild, White Fang—”
“Jack London.”
“Loved him.”
“He wrote about boats?”
“I guess so.”
“London. Think he drowned himself. Or drank himself to death.” Rut kills the last of his bloody mary. ‘“Death, where is thy sting?’”
“He died of TB.” Chase Pomeroy steps out on the Rockin’ Robin in the next slip, rubbing his eyes. “Or some shit like that. Sailed to the South Seas and brought back all these really gnarly diseases.”
Chase is a currency trader still in his thirties who has recently traded up from a little Sea Ray to a Sunchaser Predator.
“That thing get airborne?” asks Emmett, eyeing the boat.
“It’ll move.” Chase climbs on top of the cabin and lies on his back, covering his eyes against the sun. “Make the Caymans in under three hours.”
“What’s your hurry?” Rut complains about Chase speeding in the channel but always comes on deck when he brings a new girlfriend around.
Chase shrugs. “If I wanted to float with the current I’d find some Haitians and build a raft. What can you do in that thing — twelve knots, max?”
“It depends.” Rut’s face gets redder. “You hear the brouhaha last night?”
“Saw it. I was at Zooma till two — dead night, lot of dental hygienists off a cruise ship — then I hit the Daquiri Shak with Ricky G. till it closed. We got back from the Dak and there’s the whole sorry excuse for a police department and the even sorrier excuse for a rescue squad—”
“They couldn’t rescue a turd from a toilet bowl,” says Rut. “I ever get in the shit out there I’m calling Key West and taking my chances on the wait.”
“They asked us for ID. You imagine that? Ricky goes up to the captain, whatever he is, the one in charge, and says, “You know me. I used to bang your sister when she worked in my restaurant.’”
“That must have cleared things up.”
“Ricky’s slipping payoffs to every one of these guys, what’re they gonna do?”
“You see anything?”
“Lotta lights, lotta local constabulary. I think the old folks were already out of here by that point.”
Emmett nods. “You heard anything more about the storm?”
“Just that it’s supposed to be coming.” Chase shifts his arm away from his eyes to squint up at Rut. “I’m taking this out today, pollute the environment. You see Stephanie—”
“That’s the new one? Redheaded gal?”
Chase nods. “Yeah, with the wide butt. Tell her I’ll be at Zooma by ten.”
A trio of frigate birds sail over the marina, gradually losing altitude and seeming to pick up speed as they swoop down into the channel. It is already hot. A film of diesel oil swirls in rainbow colors around the pilings and a single turtle paddles between the moored boats, head just breaking the surface. Emmett likes to think of the marina as a community, maybe a few more transients than usual, but with reliably suburban rhythms. A bit of bustle at sunrise, morning errands, buckling down to serious work by midday, and then the relaxing slide to cocktail hour. He likes to hear the hardware rattling as the boats rock in their slips, the squeak of rope and cleat, the sharp luffing of plastic boat covers. He likes to hear the motors coughing into life, thrumming as they pass on the way out, likes the smell of polyurethane and deet. Emmett likes the long tines of the jetty with their evenly spaced slips, hundreds of boats with distinct outlines and personalities moored side by side, the blazing, primary blues and reds and yellows of gear, the stunning white of fiberglass and Dacron. He liked the gulls and pelicans in the old days, too, but the feeding and dumping regulations have had their effect and they only pass over now, heading for the smelly chaos of the locals’ wharf.
Roderick is talking with Ricky G., who sits looking disoriented at the fore of a shiny new Beneteau. Ricky is wearing a shirt with a Day-Glo parroffish design and has marks from fiberglass deck beading on one side of his face.
“Looks like somebody passed out on the deck,” says Emmett.
“I needed to rest.” Ricky never seems to shave yet never has a full beard, sporting a perpetual morning-after stubble. “These people are up in Vermont or something.”
“What if I trespass you,” says Roderick, “sleep on Ricky bar some night?”
Ricky tends bar at the Y-Ki-Ki, which he co-owns, the only bar locals of all colors go to. He squints at Roderick. “I’ve pulled you out from under the table more than once.”
“Never ’appen beyond closing time. Surprise me them authority don’t ’carcerate you while they here last night.”
Emmett steps closer. “Listen, Roderick, what—”
Before he can say more Roderick puts his big hand up for silence.
“Mr. Alphonse already vex me wit instruction. I got nothing to tell till official version has been spoken.”
“Were you here?”
“Drag me ass out of bed, got to open every gate in creation.” Roderick shakes his head. “Why they don’t weat till sunup, spear a mon his sleep?”
“It was an emergency.”
“Nothing in that boat that wouldn’t keep till sunup.”
“Remember the dude two Christmases ago,” says Ricky, “washed up by the old turtle works?”
“Accidental causes.”
“That’s what they always say when they don’t know shit. Didn’t know where he came from, what boat he was off of, nada. And nobody ever claimed him.”
“Plenty of that on this island.”
“But the watch he had on, the guy was obviously a tourist—”
“Black mon drown,” says Roderick, “authority don’t inquire. White mon drown they declear mystery.”
There is a pause as they all watch the blond divorcee from Sarasota and her teenage daughter in matching bikinis pass on the parallel pier. Ricky moans quietly.
“I could go either way with that.”
“Them womens kill you, Ricky. Rum has sap all your powers.”
“I heard a rumor,” says Emmett, “that it happened three days ago. Whitey and Edna.”
“No way. He came in just yesterday.” Ricky spends so many of his waking hours shooting the shit behind the bar that he never has a tan. “About four. Sat at the end, three G and Ts, paid his tab and left.”
“You didn’t talk with him?”
“There were these Belgian girls, I was feeding them yellow birds — you know, with the amaretto? They were starting to loosen up so I didn’t pay much attention to Whitey.”
“Whitey always drink his cocktail on his boat,” says Roderick. “Why is he paying double to you?”
“Psychology’s not my field, man. I just pour ’em what they ask for.”
“How’d he look?”
“Like he always did. Like he just stepped off that battlewagon of theirs with some twenty-foot sea monster in tow. He had that squinty-lookin’ smile—”