The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Most shop owners won’t break a fifty for something small, but I wanted as much good money back for each fake as I could manage. I usually began by trying to buy a soda for a dollar, or a buck fifty. If they refused, I explained that I needed change. Sometimes I made forty-eight bucks, sometimes forty. Even at the low end, I made about four grand in a week if I managed to pass all the bills, but finding a hundred places in a week was hard. Each store took time, too. I had to cast the spell and do a little dance, be indecisive, pick up items and put them back, ask a lot of questions, be in a hurry — anything to keep the bastard from looking closely at my money.
The other half of my game had one simple rule: never pay bills with fakes. First off, my fakes were lame, easily spotted ones — I counted on bored, distracted people to accept them without question. Banks, on the other hand, would trace me.
The dying afternoon sun sifted through my blinds like dust and warmed the stale air in my suite. I stepped up to the bed, a simple twin with a crappy mattress that came with the place. The only thing I’d done was replace the thin gray mattress with a brand new thin gray mattress. I made money by not spending it, but I drew the line at sleeping with a previous tenant’s skin conditions. In fact, news about mattress sales was the only real small talk at the Wallace.
I began emptying my pockets.
Sometimes even I was amazed at how much currency I traded in a day. I tossed bills onto the bed, big sweaty wads of them. I pooled the coins separately, for future sorting. Then, I sat down on the bed and sorted the bills, counting as I went. In bills, I managed three hundred and seventy-three dollars, which wasn’t bad for an afternoon that had ended with Henry’s lecture of sobriety. I piled the money into neat rubber-banded stacks, pulled out the strongbox, and the place filled with the golden light of upward mobility for a moment, improved the furniture, removed the water stains, and filled the cracks in the walls. I added the cash. A few quick adjustments in the ledger to reflect the new money, and I put everything carefully back where it had been, the strongbox chained to a bolt.
The apartment was transformed back into the last stop on the way down — nothing to see.
I went into the middle room to my bar, which was just a bottle of whiskey and a pitcher of dusty water. I poured two fingers of booze and stood by the grimy windows, yellow light illuminating the dust.
I felt tired and heavy. So much effort, just to survive. So I decided on a steak for dinner. I changed into a light suit to go to Andy’s around the corner, where all the waiters had a good-natured competition for my big tips. Down in the lobby, I had messages. One was another grifter seeking a loan, but I had better things to do with my money; it never paid to admit I had enough to lend. The second message was from a police contact, an innocuous note signed “Mr. Blue.” I pocketed them both and went to dinner.
My entire life was conducted on borrowed phones. A phone in my room, in my name, was irritating and incriminating, not to mention evidence of income, so I avoided it. At Andy’s, I ordered a drink and studied the menu, had the phone brought over, and called the cop. He answered on the fifth ring, sounding breathless.
“Yeah?”
“It’s your underground friend.”
“Where are you?”
“Andy’s on third.”
“I’ll be there, half an hour. Don’t leave.”
He hung up. Detective Paul Wilson was middle-aged, unhappy, and not averse to making a few bucks on the side. Nothing major: a little inside information, a little security work for nervous crooks. He never lost sleep over it. I’d had a few minor dealings with him, and we got along well.
I went ahead and ordered dinner. Paul showed up when I was halfway through my steak. He sat down quietly at the table and nodded at me by way of hello.
“Your name came up today,” he said. Paul was a heavyset guy, and always sounded out of breath.
“Came up how?”
“In an investigation. Old business, but nasty. They’re gonna come round you up. Ask a lot of questions. I thought I’d just let you know.”
“What old business?” I kept eating. There wasn’t any point in being dramatic about it.
“All I know is, the vic was named Murray. It was about fifteen years ago, but the case is still open.” He shifted in his seat. “That’s all I got. Just felt you should know, as an associate.”
I chewed, trying to figure out if that meant he thought he could get more money out of me, or if he was dishing some honor-amongst-thieves bullshit, or if it was just simple human respect. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
He waited a moment, unsure, and then stood up. “All right. Just thought you should know.”
I nodded again and watched him leave. I knew the name Murray, and it was a problem — one I never thought I’d have to deal with. Then again, my associates were criminals. I never knew what they were going to do. Maybe someone gave up my name out of sheer terror, or happened to remember that I’d been in the same room with so-and-so once. I knew I needed to make some calls, but decided to finish my dinner, have some coffee, and relax like a civilized man.
That was a mistake. The cops, moving with unusual speed, were waiting for me at the Wallace. I didn’t get a chance to make my calls. As I walked into my building, I acquired two hefty men in bad suits and gun-crowded shoulders who pushed me into one of the ancient plush chairs in the lobby and stood over me, making a scene in front of the concierge at the front desk.
“Walter ‘Poppy’ Popvitch?” the one on the left said.
The one on the right didn’t wait for an answer. “Where you been, Poppy? We’ve been waiting for you.”
I crossed my legs and regarded them, trying to look calm. “Out to dinner.”
“Yeah, so he said, so he said,” the one on the left nodded, looking around. “You mind we ask you a few questions?”
I shook my head. “Of course not. Can I ask you what this is about?”
I was selling ignorance, innocence, and confusion but the market was soft. They looked at each other. The one on the right shoved me, lightly. “Come on, let’s go back to the station, be friendly.”
“Am I under arrest?”
Now, I was selling outrage. This got me nothing but another shove, harder, but still short of a brutality complaint. “Not yet, but it’s in your interest to keep us happy, Poppy.”
That was annoying; no one called me Poppy. “You don’t seem too happy now” I pointed out.
The one on the right glanced at his partner, as if saying See? I told you he wasn’t going to be friendly, and slipped a hand under my armpit, pulling me up roughly.
“Come on, tough guy,” he growled.
They had no warrant, and I wasn’t under arrest, but I went quietly, like a good citizen. They had only two questions, but they got good mileage out of them, asking them over and over again.
“Did you know Andrew Murray?”
“No.”
“Did you have anything to do with his murder?”
“No.”
Between repeating their two questions, they jabbered on with a few scary details and hints that they had something on me. They didn’t, though. If they had, I would have been under arrest. So, after a few hours, they let me go to think about it and put a tail on me. But I didn’t care. I had nothing to hide: not much, anyway. I went back to Andy’s, borrowed the phone at the bar, and made my few calls. After half a beer and a lot of dial tones, I tracked down Henry and told him I’d buy him dinner if he’d come down and let me pick his brain. Henry never turned down a free meal, and he knew everything about everyone.
When Henry showed up ten minutes later, I wanted to grill him immediately about Murray, but first, there were pleasantries. I’d offended Henry at our last meeting, and he walked in the place with the wounded air of a true martyr — a sober martyr at that, the worst kind. But I couldn’t really blame him; since he’d lost the courage booze had given him, Henry made a good part of his living dealing and acquiring information, so it made sense that he’d want to keep things chatty, and I’d walked out on him mid-sentence. It was damned annoying, though, when I needed information and wanted to shake the bastard until his valuable head popped off.