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:
“I think he did,” Viceroy said. “I don’t think he was brave enough to try and cross me. I think he had the money for the blow, but we double-crossed him too soon. We should have had him put the money on the table, then done what we needed to do. Would have been easier on everybody all the way around, them especially.”
“They’d have still been dead,” Tim said, drinking the last of his beer, crushing the can.
“But they’d have just been dead. Not hurt a lot, then dead. Old fat gal, that wasn’t no easy way to go, and in the end she didn’t know nothin’. And Taylor, takin’ the knife, then out there in that car in the crusher and us telling him we were gonna run him through, and him still not talkin’.”
“Like I said, we killed the bulldog I think he was through. Fat woman wasn’t nothin’ to him, but he seemed to have a hard-on for that dog. He’d just as soon be crushed. But I still think there might not have been any money. I think maybe they was gonna do what we were gonna do. Double-cross.”
“Yeah, but we brought the blow,” Viceroy said.
Tim grinned. “Yeah, but was you gonna give it to ’em?”
Viceroy laughed, then his gaze settled lead-heavy on the mule rustlers. “Well, boys, what do you suggest I do with you pickle heads?”
“Just let us go,” James said. “Hell, this ain’t our business, and we don’t want it to be our business. It ain’t like Taylor was a relative of ours.”
“That’s right,” Elliot said. “He’s cheated us plenty on little deals.”
Viceroy was quiet. He looked at Tim. “What do you say?”
Tim pursed his lips and developed the expression of a man looking in the distance for answers. “I sympathize with these boys. I guess we could let ’em go. Give us their word, show us some ID, so they spill any beans we can find them. You know the littlest bit these days and you can find anybody.”
“Damn Internet,” Viceroy said.
Butch came out of the bathroom, naked, toweling his hair.
“You think we should let ’em go?” Viceroy asked.
Butch looked first at Viceroy and Tim, then at James and Elliot. “Absolutely.”
“Get dressed,” Viceroy said to Butch, “and we’ll let ’em go.”
“We won’t say a word,” Elliot said.
“Sure,” Viceroy said. “You look like boys who can be quiet. Don’t they?”
“Yeah,” Tim said.
“Absolutely,” Butch said, tying his shoe.
“Then we’ll just go,” James said, standing up from his position on the floor, Elliot following suit.
“Not real quick,” Viceroy said. “You got a mule, huh?” James nodded. “What’s he worth?”
“Couple thousand dollars to the right people.”
“What about people ain’t maybe quite as right?”
“A thousand. Twelve hundred.”
“What were you supposed to get?”
“Eight hundred.”
“We could do some business, you know.”
James didn’t say anything. He glanced toward the door where the men had been at work on Mrs. Taylor. He saw the bulldog lying there on the linoleum in its pool of hardened blood, and flowing from the bedroom was fresh blood. The fresh pool flowed around the crusty old pool and bled into the living room of the trailer and died where the patch of carpet near the couch began; the carpet began to slowly absorb it.
James knew these folks weren’t going to let them go anywhere.
“I think we’ll take the mule,” Viceroy said. “Though I ain’t sure I’m gonna give you any eight hundred dollars.”
“We give it to you as a gift,” Elliot said. “Just take it, and the trailer it’s in, and let us go.”
“That’s a mighty nice offer,” Viceroy said. “Nice, huh, boys?”
“Damn nice,” Tim said.
“Absolutely,” Butch said. “They could have held out and tried to deal. You don’t get much nicer than that.”
“And throwing in the trailer too,” Tim said. “Now, that’s white of ’em.”
James took hold of the doorknob, turned it, said, “We’ll show him to you.”
“Wait a minute,” Viceroy said.
“Come on out,” James said.
Butch darted across the room, took hold of James’s shoulder. “Hold up.”
The door was open now. Rain was really hammering. The mule, its head hung, was visible in the trailer.
“Ain’t no need to get wet,” Viceroy said.
James had one foot on the steps outside. “You ought to see what you’re gettin’.”
“It’ll do,” Viceroy said. “It ain’t like we’re payin’ for it.”
Butch tightened his grip on James, and Elliot, seeing how this was going to end up and somehow feeling better about dying out in the open, not eight feet from a deceased bulldog, a room away from a skinned fat woman, pushed against Butch and stepped out behind James and into the yard.
“Damn,” Viceroy said.
“Should I?” Butch said, glancing at Viceroy, touching the gun in his pants.
“Hell, let’s look at the mule,” Viceroy said.
Viceroy put on his odd hat and they all went out in the rain for a look. Viceroy looked as if he were some sort of escapee from a mental institution, wearing a hubcap. The rain ran off of it and made a curtain of water around his head.
They stood by the trailer staring at the mule. Tim said, “Someone’s painted its nose, or it’s been dippin’ it in shit.”
James and Elliot said nothing.
James glanced at the trailer, saw there was no underpinning. He glanced at Elliot, nodded his head slightly. Elliot looked carefully. He had an idea what James meant. They might roll under the trailer and get to the other side and start running. It wasn’t worth much. Tim and Butch looked as if they could run fast, and all they had to do was run fast enough to get a clear shot.
“This is a goddamn stupid thing,” Butch said, the rain hammering his head. “Us all standing out here in the rain lookin’ at a goddamn mule. We could be dry and these two could be—”
A horn honked. Coming up the drive was a black Ford pickup with a camper fastened to the bed.
The truck stopped and a man the shape of a pear with the complexion of a marshmallow, dressed in khakis the color of walnut bark, got out smiling teeth all over the place. He had a rooster under his arm.
He said, “Hey, boys. Where’s George?”
“He ain’t feelin’ so good,” Viceroy said.
The man with the rooster saw the gun Viceroy was holding. He said, “You boys plinkin’ cans?”
“Somethin’ like that,” Viceroy said.
“Would you tell George to come out?” the man said.
“He won’t come out,” Butch said.
The man’s smile fell away. “Why not? He knows I’m comin’.”
“He’s under the weather,” Viceroy said.
“Can’t we all go inside? It’s like being at the bottom of a lake out here.”
“Naw. He don’t want us in there. Contagious.”
“What’s he got?”
“You might say a kind of lead poisonin’.”
“Well, he wants these here chickens. I got the camper back there full of ’em. They’re fightin’ chickens. Best damn bunch there is. This’n here, he’s special. He’s a stud rooster. He ain’t fightin’ no more. Won his last one. Got a bad shot that put blood in his lungs, but I put his head in my mouth and sucked it out, and he went on to win. Just come back from it and won. I decided to stud him out.”
“He’s gettin’ all wet,” Butch said.
“Yeah he is,” said the chicken man.
“Let’s end this shit,” Tim said.
James reached over and pulled the bar on the trailer and the gate came open. He said, “Let’s show him to you close up.”
“Not now,” Viceroy said, but James was in the trailer now. He took the rope off the trailer rail and tied it around the mule’s neck and put a loop over its head, started backing him out.