The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction
- Автор: Якубовски Максим, Беллем Роберт
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Constable & Robinson
- ISBN: 9781472111807
- Жанр: Крутые детективы
Электронная книга - «The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction». Краткое содержание книги:
I could tell by the way she acted that she figured I was on the make. It made me a little sore to be picked for a masher. But I’d walked into it and I was getting a chance to talk with the girl and that was what I was working for. She made her rounds and went out in the back. I waited the five minutes and went the same way.
The bar went about halfway across the back of the building, and the swinging doors to the kitchen opened at one end of it. Past this door was an open hall with a shaded sign on each side of it. One read: LADIES, the other GENTLEMEN. On the other side of the bar was another hall, but this one was curtained and there was no sign of any kind by it.
I took it for granted it would lead back to dressing-rooms for the floor show that was advertised as being on three times nightly. To be truthful I wasn’t worrying about it much. I was thinking I’d stumbled on a lead to my missing George Harper if I worked it right and got any kind of break.
As I went down my hall I saw the girl waiting for me. It was quite dark, so dark that I could scarcely make out the dim outlines of the girl.
She said: “Okay, hot shot! Spring it fast! I’ve got to get back on the floor. I’m not through work until four.”
I gave her the change from the five and said: “I’m law. I want to know where you got that pin that’s holding your blouse together. I’m willing to pay for the information, and if I don’t get it I’m willing to take you out of here right now. Not at four o’clock, but right now.”
“Tough, eh?” she said, sounding very thoughtful about it.
“Tough enough.”
She proved half smart right then. She said: “You’re private law, if you’re any law at all. No regular cop would pay for what he could get for nothing. Listen. I get through here at four and I ride back with some of the boys in the band. My name’s Mary Ames, and I live on West Seventieth. Can you remember the address?”
I said I could and she gave it to me.
She said: “I can’t talk now. I haven’t got time. And I haven’t got guts enough, either, Mister. You wait for me outside my place. I’ll be there about a quarter to five at the latest. And I’m not doing this for the twenty.”
“What for then?” I asked.
She said: “You wouldn’t understand.”
And with that the door of the men’s lounge opened and two men came out. And after them a third.
The first one was the bartender who’d heaved me out of the place that afternoon. The second was a dapper little man about half the barman’s size. The third was Whitey Malone. With the light from the open door on them they were in a spot where I could get a good look. And I looked even as I ducked so that the barman wouldn’t recognise me.
I even looked long enough to see the little man with him had a scarred neck. The scar ran from just back of his ear down into his collar. The barman and his pal ducked into a door right across the hall from the one they’d come out of – a door that in that shadow I hadn’t even seen. Whitey turned away toward the bar and dance floor.
I said to the girclass="underline" “Who was the big guy?”
“Oh!” she said worriedly. “Did he see us?”
I told her that I didn’t think it likely; that we were probably too much in shadow. I didn’t tell her that if that barman had seen me he’d have probably tried to repeat the afternoon performance, because I certainly didn’t have either the time or the wish to go into that right then.
“You be in front of my place at that time,” she said. “Hurry back now. I’ve got to go. Please! You don’t know the chance I’m taking.”
I said again that I’d be waiting for her and went back in the bar and dance place. As soon as I got Whitey’s eye I nodded toward the door and paid my bar check and went out. Whitey followed me in more of a hurry than I thought he’d be in. I asked him if he’d found out anything.
“Just that you were talking to a girl in that back hall,” he told me. “That’s all.”
“Did you see me?”
“Sure – not plain, but plain enough.”
That gave me something to think about while I was driving back into town.
It wasn’t until I’d been waiting a half-hour too long that I really started to worry. And at half-past five I started back alone. I had a notion to stop for Whitey, but all he was good for was a stand-up and knock-down fight. And I had a hunch it wasn’t going to be anything like that.
I was right. Plenty right. I left my car way this side of the place, before I came to the bridge which was at least a half-mile this side of the tavern. I went up through the brush at the side of the road, too, making the sneak as quiet as I could. But, just the same, I barely put my head out of the bushes, and where I could see the place, when somebody shot at it.
It wasn’t any mistake, either. It wasn’t anybody potting at what he thought was a rabbit with a small-calibre rifle. The weapon was a heavy pistol. And when I ducked my head like a turtle and went back in the brush they tried for a lucky break and emptied the gun just by guess in my general direction.
By the time they got it unloaded I was getting away from there fast. I didn’t have any reason at all to shoot back, even if I did have a dirty idea about it. And that wasn’t enough. I stopped for breath and heard them chasing me.
One of them shouted: “He went this way, Sam.”
The voice was over at the side, so I kept on heading down the general direction of the road, to where I’d left my car. And I pretty near got caught – because they figured I’d go that way and almost cut me off.
If they hadn’t I wouldn’t have found the car. I got to the bridge with them close enough behind so that I knew I’d never make it across without being seen. And I had the choice of making a target of myself or getting wet.
I took the latter. Ducking under the bridge with my gun out, I was ready to pop anybody who came in under there after me. The two of them who were chasing me stood right over me and talked it over.
One was the barman I’d had the trouble with. I knew his voice. The other belonged to a stranger, or at least I didn’t recognise it. The barman spoke, and it was all I could do to understand him because he was out of breath.
“The skunk got away. It’s the same guy, I tell you. The one I gave the heave-ho to this afternoon.”
The other one said: “You damn fool! How d’ya know that? And if it was, why didn’t you let him walk into something? What in hell did you start blasting at him for?”
The barman insisted: “It’s the same guy. He was snooping around tonight, too, I tell you. It was him talking to Mary.”
“It was probably some damn fool drunk wandering around the woods. Maybe some guy who ran out of gas and came up to the place looking for a borrow.”
“He wouldn’t come up through the brush, would he?”
The other man thought this over and finally admitted it wasn’t likely.
Then he said: “To hell with it! If the guy tries to pull the cops in they’ll laugh at him. He hasn’t got anything except an idea. If they come up and say anything we’ll tell ’em the guy must either be crazy or drunk. The place is clear.”
“It is not.”
“Why not?”
“Maury!”
The other man laughed. “Maury’ll be okay! Don’t you fret about Maury.”
They left, and I let down the hammer of my gun and looked around. I was in mud to my waist and in water up to my knees. But what I was looking at was the back end of a convertible coupé sticking up out of the water just under the overhang of the bridge. The car was just about on its nose, with the back end far enough out of water for me to see it was a new green car.
And Miss Bryce had told me her missing boyfriend was driving a new green convertible . . .