"Shadow - 350601 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Kitchen Trap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

cheapest set-up on the menu, would keep out the other extreme. Middle flight,
and for the most part colorless, were Andre's customers.
Waitresses, in the hideous pink-and-orange outfits the girl had remembered
from a previous visit to the eating place, were passing up and down the narrow
aisles between the tables. Dozens of them. It was a big layout.
But--why had Pete Brophy picked it to eat in, night after night? What was
there here to particularly attract a middle-aged Irishman of simple tastes and--
The girl at the corner table stiffened suddenly.
A man had come up to the blonde in the cashier's cage and was saying
something--something casual, at which the girl grinned and disclosed a gold
tooth. The man, from his dress, was an upper employee of Andre's. The
headwaiter, possibly.
His long face was pock-marked, giving it almost the effect of a dappled horse.
His big, yellow teeth helped to accentuate the impression. It was a face ugly
enough to linger in the memory. And the redhead remembered it. Front and side
views, in the Noonan Agency files. Number something-or-other in the pretty
grifter section. Name was--Grogan. "Sniffle" Grogan. Two years for attempted
holdup. Quashed indictment for perjury in the "Angelface" Maganelli murder
trial. And Grogan was working at Andre's! Not impossible, of course, for a crook
to mend his ways and look for honest employment. But--old Pete Brophy
wouldn't have concerned himself with honest employment.
Still stirring the crackers into her chowder, the girl at the corner table watched
Sniffle leave the cashier's cage and roll toward the swinging doors through which
waitresses were passing to and from the kitchens beyond.
A bus-boy who looked like an ex-pug met the headwaiter's glance as the two
met near the redhead's table. Sniffle's head jerked quickly. "Twenty-five, Rocky."
The bus-boy's gimlet eyes sparkled blackly in his punch-flattened face as he
nodded. Andre's two employees separated, Grogan heading for the kitchens and
the younger man busying himself with a tray of dirty dishes.
Again--nothing damning. The encounter, seemingly casual, might have been
explained as having to do with any one of a dozen restaurant duties. But Pete
Brophy hadn't been investigating the restaurant business, either! And that look
that had passed between the two--
A pink-and-orange waitress, the color scheme of her uniform carried
unintentionally to her lips and the blobs of color on her cheeks, stopped beside
the chromium-and-tile table.
"Anything else you wish, miss?"
"That'll be all," the redhead answered, pushing back her chair and dropping a
dime on the glassy surface beside her empty bowl. "Except--could you tell me
where I'll find the ladies' lounge?"
"Back of the restaurant, first door to the right."
The mechanical answer did not interfere with the waitress's quick gesture
toward the coin. Nodding her thanks, Andre's customer moved toward the rear of
the garish room.
A new man was stopping beside the cashier's cage now--a heavy-set,
swarthy face above a too-fancy cutaway, black hair and a blue, thick chin.
"Evening, Mr. Andre," the blonde in the cage said meekly.
He nodded at her, but did not speak. His restless gaze roamed the restaurant.
The redhead, passing quickly, had seemed not to notice. But as she kept on
toward the ladies' lounge, her sherry-colored eyes were speculatively narrowed.