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:
“Yeah,” he said.
“We come to see Taylor,” Elliot said.
“He ain’t here right now,” said the man.
“He’s expectin’ us,” James said.
“Say he is?”
“We got a mule to sell him,” James said.
“That right?”
“Mrs. Taylor here?” James asked.
“Naw. She ain’t. Ain’t neither one of them here.”
“Where’s Bullet?” Elliot asked.
“He don’t buy mules, does he?”
“Bullet?” Elliot said.
“Didn’t you ask for him?”
“Well, yeah, but not to buy nothin’.”
“You boys come on in,” came a voice from inside the trailer. “It’s all right there, Butch, stand aside. These here boys are wantin’ to do some business with George. That’s what we’re doin’.”
Butch stood aside. James and Elliot went inside.
“So is he here?” James asked.
“No. Not just now. But we’re expectin’ him shortly.”
Butch stepped back and leaned against the trailer’s kitchen counter, which was stacked with dirty dishes. The place smelled funny. The man who had asked them to come inside was seated on the couch. He was portly, wearing black pants and black shoes with the toes turned up. He had on a big black Hawaiian-style shirt with hula girls in red, blue, and yellow along the bottom. He had greasy black hair combed straight back and tied in a little ponytail. A white short-brimmed hat with a near-flat crown was on a coffee table in front of him, along with a can of beer and a white substance in four lines next to a rolled dollar bill. He had his legs crossed and he was playing with the tip of one of his shoes. He had a light growth of beard and he was smiling at them.
“What you boys sellin’?” he asked.
“A mule,” James said.
“No shit?”
“That’s right,” Elliot said. “When’s George coming back?”
“Sometime shortly after the Second Coming. But I doubt he’ll go with God.”
Elliot looked at James. James shrugged, and at that moment he saw past Elliot, and what he saw was Bullet lying on the floor near a doorway to the bedroom, a pool of blood under him. He tried not to let his eyes stay on Bullet long. He said, “Tell you what, boys. I think me and Elliot will come back later, when George is here.”
The big man lifted up his Hawaiian shirt and showed him his hairy belly and against it a little flat black automatic pistol. He took the pistol out slowly and put it on his knee and looked at them.
“Naw. He ain’t comin’ back, and you boys ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“Aw shit,” Elliot said, suddenly getting it. “He ain’t no friend of ours. We just come to do business, and if he ain’t here to do business, you boys got our blessing. And we’ll just leave and not say a word.”
Another man came out of the back room. He was naked and carrying a bowie knife. He was muscular, bug-nosed, with close-cut hair. There was blood on him from thighs to neck. From the back room they heard a moan.
The naked man looked at them, then at the man on the couch.
“Friends of Taylor’s,” the man on the couch said.
“We ain’t,” James said. “We hardly know him. We just come to sell a mule.”
“A mule, huh,” said the naked man. He didn’t seem bashful at all. His penis was bloody and stuck to his right leg like some kind of sucker fish. The naked man nodded his head at the open doorway behind him, spoke to the man on the couch. “I’ve had all of that I want and can take, Viceroy. It’s like cutting blubber off a whale.”
“You go on and shower,” Viceroy said, then smiled, added: “And be sure and wash the parts you don’t normally touch.”
“Ain’t no parts Tim don’t touch,” Butch said.
“I tell you what,” Tim said. “You get in there and go to work, then show me how funny you are. That old woman is hardheaded.”
Tim went past Butch, driving the bowie knife into the counter, rattling the dishes.
Viceroy stared at Butch. “Your turn.”
“What about you?” Butch said.
“I don’t take a turn. Get with it.”
Butch put his cap on the counter next to a greasy plate, took off his shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes. He pulled the knife out of the counter and started for the bedroom. He said, “What about these two?”
“Oh, me and them are gonna talk. Any friend of Taylor’s is a friend of mine.”
“We don’t really know him,” James said. “We just come to sell a mule.”
“Sit down on the floor there, next to the wall, away from the door,” Viceroy said, and scratched the side of his cheek with the barrel of the automatic.
A moment later they heard screams from the back room and Butch yelling something, then there was silence, followed shortly by more screams.
“Butch ain’t got Tim’s touch,” Viceroy said. “Tim can skin you and you can walk off before you notice the hide on your back, ass, and legs is missin’. Butch, he’s a hacker.”
Viceroy leaned forward, took up the dollar bill, and sucked up a couple lines of the white powder. “Goddamn, that’ll do it,” he said.
Elliot said, “What is that?”
Viceroy laughed. “Boy, you are a rube, ain’t you? Would you believe bakin’ soda?”
“Really?” Elliot said.
Viceroy hooted. “No. Not really.”
From the bedroom you could hear Butch let out a laugh. “Crackers,” he said.
“It’s cocaine,” James said to Elliot. “I seen it in a movie.”
“Good God,” Elliot said.
“My, you boys are delicate for a couple of thieves,” Viceroy said.
Tim came out of the bathroom, still naked, bouncing his balls with a towel.
“Put some clothes on,” Viceroy said. “We don’t want to see that.”
Tim looked hurt, put on his clothes, and adjusted his cap. Viceroy snorted the last two lines of coke. “Damn, that’s some good stuff. You can step on that multiple.”
“Let me have a snort,” Tim said.
“Not right now,” Viceroy said.
“How come you get to?” Tim said.
“ ’Cause I’m the biggest bull in the woods, boy. And you can test that anytime you got the urge.”
Tim didn’t say anything. He went to the refrigerator, found a beer, popped it, and began to sip.
“I don’t think she knows nothing,” Tim said. “She wouldn’t hold back havin’ that done to her for a few thousand dollars. Not for a million.”
“I reckon you’re right,” said Viceroy. “I just don’t like quittin’ halfway. You finish a thing, even if it ain’t gonna turn out. Ain’t that right, boys?”
James and Elliot didn’t reply. Viceroy laughed and picked up the beer on the coffee table and took a jolt of it. He said to himself, “Yeah, that’s right. You don’t do a thing half-ass. You do it all the way. What time is it?”
Tim reached in his pocket and took out a pocket watch. James recognized it as belonging to George Taylor. “It’s four.”
“All right,” Viceroy said, satisfied, and sipped his beer.
After a time Butch came out of the bedroom bloody and looking tired. “She ain’t gonna tell nobody nothin’. She’s gone. She couldn’t take no more. She’d have known somethin’, she’d have told it.”
“Guess Taylor didn’t tell her,” Tim said. “Guess she didn’t know nothin’.”
“George had more in him than I thought, goin’ like that, takin’ all that pain and not talkin’,” Viceroy said. “I wouldn’t have expected it of him.”
Tim nodded his head. “When you shot his bulldog, I think he was through. Took the heart right out of him. Wasn’t a thing we could do to him then that mattered.”
“Money’s around here somewhere,” Viceroy said.
“He might not have had nothin’,” Butch said, walking to the bathroom.