"Shadow - 351015 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Bombproof Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

outside of the building. Small. Dark. Clean enough, but tainted with the fetid smell of
decay that hung over everything in the place.
Mrs. Mapes, indicating a wicker rocking chair to her caller, flopped wearily
onto the broken-down couch herself.
"All set, Miss Redmond."
The girl from Noonan's pawed in her bag for a notebook and the stub of a
pencil. She flipped the former open on her knee with a professional snap that
she hoped would impress her hostess.
"Now then! Mr. Mapes's age?"
"Forty-three."
"Born in New York?"
"Englewood, New Jersey, ma'am."
Stock questions, all meaningless, dropped from the girl's lips as quickly
as the driver's wife could answer them.
In the notebook she was making shorthand notes of quite another character.
Such as: "Beer steins on shelf; Mapes and two others must drink here. Poker
chips under tableЧthey play here--Poker-face Mapes."
At last, having lulled the woman's suspicions, Grace started to put out her
feelers.
"Has Mr. Mapes any close friends?"
"Friends? Sure. He ain't a clubby man, but he gets on all right."
"I mean, special friends. People we ought to let know about hospital visiting
hours?"
"WellЧthere's Peewee Belk and Otto. Especially Peewee. Them three
play a bit of cards together. And Wally and Peewee been meeting noontimes at
the Imperial Lunch near by Horner's, ever since Peewee was fired from
there."
"Check ex-employee Belk," went into the notebook.
"I'm liable to find him at the Imperial, then, Mrs. MapesЧto inform
him?"
Wally's wife nodded.
"It's right good of you folks to do all this for a poor man, Miss Redmond.
I sure didn't realizeЧ"
"Part of our regular hospital routine, Mrs. Mapes. Now if you could give
me a description of Mr. Belk, so I canЧ"
The woman jumped to her feet and began to fish for something in one
drawer of a battered chest in the window corner of the room. After a moment, she
dragged out a sleazy snapshot album and bore it in triumph across to the rocker.
"Better than that! Here's the photo the boys had took at the laundry
convention picnic last year. Peewee was still workin' for the laundry, then.
There's Wally, and then Slugger NixonЧhim and Wally ain't good friends any
moreЧand then Peewee next."

It was too dark in the cubbyhole of a flat to make sure of faces. But Grace
studied the convention picture as best she could, cursing the shadows.
Nixon, with whom Mapes had fallen out somehow. "Peewee" Belk, fired
from Horner's, the wounded driver's crony. The fact that they were side by side at
the picnic might have been an accident. On the other handЧ
Grace Culver's whole life had been a series of hunches, striking like
lightning. One of her better ones struck now! She swallowed hard.