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:
“A grifter?” Flaherty asked.
Slabbe leaned forward. “You got it.”
Flaherty shook his head ponderously. “Nope, nobody like that.”
Carlin groaned. “Go for a walk, Flaherty.”
He jack-knifed bony legs out of the sedan, complaining to Slabbe: “These kind of people are very tough or dumb. I don’t know just what to fish for, except to find out if one of them knows why Nola wanted Max Lorenz.”
Slabbe followed him up a flagged walk that was almost a double-lane driveway. He observed the lawns, trees, shrubbery and outlying buildings. “Good place to play cowboys and Indians.”
A dark, bulking shadow drifted in behind them, said: “Yeah. Which one of you is Tonto and which is the Lone Ranger?”
Neither Slabbe or Carlin looked around. They kept walking. Slabbe said conversationally: “Without looking, I’d say this is the chauffeur.”
Carlin said: “A college man?”
“Dartmouth or Dannemora,” Slabbe agreed.
The voice behind them said sneeringly: “You read that in Murder, My Sweet.”
Slabbe said: “The book was called Farewell, My Lovely. You’re thinking of the picture. You saw me at Fudge Burke’s place. This is Carlin, Homicide.”
“He doesn’t need a sheriff’s star on his chest. What are you heckling these people for? Prentice is a lush. Ione’s in love with love. Bill Teel’s weak with a touch of malaria, and Miss Yates will tell you to go to hell.”
“Let her tell us herself,” Carlin snapped.
“John Nola didn’t take any of them into his confidence,” the chauffeur said, shoulder to shoulder with them now, but considerably taller.
“He did you, though, I guess,” Carlin sneered.
“Yeah, he did me, though, you guess.”
“Just a second, Pat.” Slabbe stopped, faced the chauffeur. In the dark their silhouettes could have doubled for part of the scenery: Slabbe for one of the fuller evergreens, the chauffeur for a medium-sized oak.
Slabbe said genially: “I always like to hear small talk in the evening. What’s your name, bo?”
“Mister Alan Hurst to you, big boy.”
“You heard Prentice call me that. Ernie Hurst any relative of yours? Ernie and I had adjoining suites in the tank once.”
“My brother.”
Slabbe studied the man’s heavy face, thick neck, powerful shoulders. “You don’t look much like Ernie. He’s about as wide as a hatchet blade.”
“Yeah,” Hurst said. “My old man took one look at me and bought an electric ice box.”
“You got a record?” Slabbe asked.
“A record of clean living, thank you.”
“Turn it on, then.”
“As one citizen to another, you could go dip your head in shellac,” Hurst said. “To give the people inside a break, OK, I’ll tell you! I took eight or nine hundred lickings from my old man, then gave him a daisy and took off. Ernie stayed, and maybe that’s why he’s such a runt. I bummed around, then Miss Yates caught me snitching pears off one of those trees in the back. She gave me a break. I was sixteen. I’ve been the chauffeur around here for fifteen years. I got a bad heart, believe it or scratch, so I wasn’t in the Army. A chauffeur gets close to his boss, so I know why Mr Nola wanted Max Lorenz, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the tribe.”
Slabbe nudged Carlin. “I could go a bottle of beer while we hear this.”
“Huh?” Carlin said. “Oh, sure. But there ain’t a saloon in this neighborhood.”
“Come on, I’ll buy,” the chauffeur said. He started across the lawn toward the garage. Slabbe winked at Carlin. They fell in: two longs and a short.
4. Land of Silk and Money
Alan Hurst said: “You Dick Tracys want Max Lorenz, right?”
Slabbe and Carlin exchanged glances over their beer bottles. Carlin said to Hurst: “Go ahead.”
“You want to know why John Nola wanted Lorenz, too, right?” Hurst asked. “Go ahead, you both grunt together now.”
Carlin scowled. “We could do this downtown, too, if you’re so big for your pants.”
“I’m pale,” Hurst said. He lounged back in a well-worn, leather-upholstered rocker, his yellow-flecked hazel eyes amused at Slabbe and Carlin, across the room. They were in his spacious quarters on the second floor of the Nola garage – bedroom, bath and roomy sitting room.
Hurst stretched long black-putteed legs in front of him, yawned absently and undid the top couple buttons of his gray tunic. “You won’t find Lorenz in a hurry, if at all,” he said reflectively. He removed his visored cap and ruffled thick dark brown hair with a paddle-sized hand.
Slabbe chewed gum solemnly, suggested to Carlin: “Let’s go halfway with him, Pat.”
“Nuts,” Hurst said. “You don’t have to do me favors. I’m doing you one. I’ll be handing you stuff that it would take you months to get on your own – if you ever got it.”
Carlin’s bony nose came forward. “Get to the point, son, get to the point.”
“Gladly, sir, he said,” Hurst mocked. “I know how you johns work, so I want a concession.”
Carlin snapped: “What does that crack mean?”
Hurst shrugged. “Just that you’re interested in getting your own chores done, not some other cops’ in some other town or county or state.”
“Yeah?” Carlin challenged.
“Oh, relax,” Hurst said. “I’d hate to be hanging since the last time you were to Sunday School.”
“I knew it,” Carlin said thickly. “Wasting our time.” He started to get up.
“Wait,” Hurst frowned. “I’m saying what I’m saying—”
“Trouble is you’re not saying nothing!” Carlin spat.
“I will,” Hurst returned. “But only because the old girl up at the house there gave me a fair shake when anyone else would have seen me in reform school and now I can do her a favor back for it.”
“Miss Yates, huh?” Slabbe said. “Then she’s in it?”
“She is like hell. Ione’s in it. I mean Bill Teel’s in it, not Miss Yates.”
“Clear as hell, ain’t it?” Carlin sneered.
Hurst’s wide dark face tightened. “Give me a chance, I’m getting there. Miss Yates is nuts about Ione, so anything that hurts the kid hurts her, that’s all.”
Slabbe nodded. “And anything that hurts Teel hurts Ione and that hurts Miss Yates, that it?”
Hurst nodded in return. Carlin said: “Well, we got together for a second.”
“Grow up, will you?” Hurst drawled. “OK, I’ll pull out the stops. Here it is – Ione’s boyfriend got it in the war and she’s always been a romantic drip and she almost blew her top. She was in a fog for months —”
Slabbe murmured: “Is Ione really Miss Yates’ daughter?”
“I don’t know. I guess. What’s the odds?” Hurst shrugged. “She loves her like her own, which is the thing. Anyway, then Prentice came home with Bill Teel and Ione fell for him. So it was OK for a while. Teel seemed like a swell guy. He knew something about the silk business and pitched right in and really did a job. He did what the old man hoped Prentice would do, I’d say. You know, take the business to heart and so on.”
“Nola liked Teel?” Slabbe asked.
“Yeah, at first. I’m coming to that. Nola thought Teel was OK. The guy was a returned soldier and all that, and he was making good. The hitch came when the date was set for Teel and Ione to marry. The old man must have figured it was time to know a little more about Teel.”
Carlin smacked his lips. “So Nola hired Jake George to look Teel up.”
Hurst nodded easily, though his yellow-flecked eyes were veiled. “That was a couple weeks back. Jake George poked around – how do you go about tracing a guy? Look up his record in the service if you can, see where he enlisted, talk to draft board, huh? Me, I’d just go through the guy’s stuff and look for letters and addresses and so on.”