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:
“Prentice is so confused,” murmured the ash-blonde. “I know how he feels, I had nothing to live for, either, till Bill came.” Her soft gray eyes went to the dead-faced young man.
Prentice mocked: “My Lord, sweetness and light at Fudge Burke’s.”
“Shut up, Prentice,” ordered the tinkling voice. “Don’t be sentimental, Ione,” it told the blonde. “Start him moving, William,” it prodded the object of Ruby’s predatory gleam – not missing it at all.
It was then Slabbe’s turn. “May I ask who you are?” the old woman murmured. “You were about to fight with Prentice, weren’t you? You’d make mincemeat of him.”
Slabbe tongued his chewing gum into a cavity, suspecting that it would offend. “I’m a private detective, ma’am. Benjamin Slabbe.”
“Indeed. Prentice isn’t involved with the law? He became intoxicated one night and forged his father’s name to a check, but that was settled in the family, and he didn’t do it again.”
Prentice snarled: “Thank you, Aunt Serena!”
“Tchah! You can’t keep things from detectives, you jackanapes.” Her eyes were black moist olives, thirty years younger than the rest of her. She said to Slabbe: “I am Serena Yates, John Nola’s wife’s sister. You know Prentice. This is Ione Nola and William Teel, her fiancé. We’ve just buried John. We think Prentice should come home with us for the afternoon, at least. You’re not arresting him?”
“No, ma’am,” Slabbe said. “I only asked him if he knew why his father hired a detective named Jake George.”
“I see. Did he know?”
“He said not. More likely – maybe – uh, perhaps you—”
“More likely I know?” Miss Yates provided. “No. I ran my brother-in-law’s home for him, raised his children, practically, but I was not in his confidence about any monkey business. I’ll be happy to talk with you later. Right now, we’re leaving . . . Prentice, you’re ready?” The black eyes seemed to notice Ruby Reed for the first time.
Prentice grimaced and performed the introduction. “Miss Reed. Yes, Aunt Serena, a casual acquaintance.” Prentice patted Ruby’s not-thin arm. “Excuse it, sugar. I’ll see you later.”
“By all means bring Miss Reed along,” Miss Yates said abruptly. Everyone stared. Bill Teel’s dead face threw off its paralysis to twitch protestingly.
Ruby was off her stool, chin up, sails set. “I’d love to come,” she cooed.
“Of course, my child,” Miss Yates said, black eyes gliding the length of Ruby’s statuesque figure with no more interest than a python might have in its prey. She turned and the brute in chauffeur’s livery took her arm solicitously.
Slabbe stood aside. As Ruby Reed glided past him, he whispered: “What time?”
Her lips didn’t move. “Forget it.”
Slabbe watched them leave, the little old lady in black on the arm of the hulking chauffeur, followed by Ione Nola and Bill Teel and The Drunk and The Body. He tried to dip up an appropriate rhyme or moral or parable, plodded to a phone booth.
He informed Carlin: “Ruby Reed at the Carleton Arms Hotel knows Max Lorenz, but don’t pressure her yet – I got her dated whether she likes it or not. She came to Fudge Burke’s place the first time Saturday night and picked up Prentice Nola, a drinker and gambler, who once forged a check on his pop. Doesn’t seem like anything Jake George would have been called in on, though. He’s dead, says Fudge Burke. How d’yuh like that?”
“Geez!”
“The docs find a slug in Lorenz’s thigh?”
“No. They found false teeth in his mouth, though.”
“So then it ain’t Lorenz,” Slabbe grunted morosely. “Zenith said he has natural teeth.”
“Yeah. This burned guy had a skull fracture, too, before the fire started. The fracture killed him and the fact that there was time enough for some fat to travel to the lungs shows the guy was dead before the car went over the cliff. It’s homicide.”
“And Jake George had false teeth,” Slabbe said. “And he left his office Monday with Lorenz. Lorenz dumped Jake into Bleeker’s figuring Jake would be identified as him. It adds. Lorenz told the Zenith plant in Lewisburg that he wouldn’t even see him around in a couple days. He told the used-car dealer he only wanted the jalop for a few days. He had it rigged, huh, Pat? . . . Hey, you there?”
Carlin grunted peevishly. “Yeah, I’m here. Stuck here. If I could get a civil service job, I’d leave here in three minutes.”
“I know. It just goes to show you,” Slabbe consoled.
“Show me what?”
“I dunno. Can’t think of anything symbolic. How about checking the speedometer in Lorenz’s car? We know he drove here from Lewisburg. See if the miles say he went anywhere else, huh?”
“What’s about Jake George?”
“I’m checking that right now.”
“Where can I catch you?”
“Wherever somebody burns a corpse behind ’em.”
Evening chill laced the late April sunlight and toilers who had beat the time clock a little shuttled through the streets, as Slabbe stepped out of a cab in front of a moldy but not resigned brick building called the Fairview Hotel, and ferried his gray-tropical-worsted-clad bulk across the lobby. He wore the same weight clothing all year around, without topcoat, changed every day, but was not the best customer a tailor could have in the pressing department. About June he changed his gray winter hat for a white Panama.
The lobby was as large and as full as the ace of diamonds, the pip being a youth of sixty who drew salary as desk clerk. He gave Slabbe the number of Dink Quint’s room, not ungraciously, not too hungrily and did not look too disappointed when there was no more to the transaction. Slabbe entered an automatic elevator, pressed the 5 button and braced himself as engineering noises clanked above and below him and the cage took off. On 5 he got out gingerly and rapped on Dink Quint’s door.
A dry, tired whisper eddied from beyond the door, repeated itself several times before Slabbe’s ears organized it. It was saying: “Come in. Come on in. For crissakes, are you deaf? Come in.”
Slabbe tested the door, found it unlocked and filled it for a second and then was in a fairly spacious hotel cell. Dry, tired eyes checked him over. The whispering vocal chords sighed, and Dink Quint slid a small-wristed pale hand from under his pillow, made himself more comfortable under four blankets, reached for an eye-cup on the table beside his bed and began filling it with eye-wash from a blue bottle. Five colors stabbed and slashed each other in his silk pajamas.
“Snazzy pajumpers there,” Slabbe admired. “Steal ’em from a Jap? I guess Fudge called and said I was coming?”
“I don’t sleep with the door open,” Dink husked and sat up and threw a shot into each eye. He was five feet three, a good hundred pounds after a steak dinner, with tiredness living closer to him than his skin – except when he was on duty in front of the one-way glass in Fudge Burke’s office. Then he missed nothing.
Slabbe looked for a chair, dismissed the contraption as unfit for heavy duty and balanced himself for a stand.
He said: “Shoot then.”
Dink put down his eye-cup, jacked a cigarette between his dry, tired lips and turned his thin face sideways so he didn’t have to lift the match farther than necessary. He began to talk.
“Jake George came into Fudge’s place Monday afternoon about three-thirty and had two shots and two beers while he was waiting for a sandwich: pickled tongue. He ate it and had a couple more drinks. He was killing time. He was ready to shove off again when he got a phone call.”