"Avram Davidson - The Dive People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

picked it up. Gory auto wreck on page one, European infamy on page two,
society scandal on page three, page four the latest teenage gang fight, page
five and further on the "news" dwindled to tiny paragraphs buried in
advertising and syndication. Nothing there that meant anything to him. It
was a late edition. If the body hadn't been found by press time it couldn't
be in any well-frequented place. OrтАФwas it true that the police sometimes
didn't announce the finding right away? Waiting for the killer toтАФ

To what? What killer? Edward Peterson? Absurd, he was no killer. He'd
been no cuckold, either, but he had been cuckolded nonetheless by Lynn,
his wife-before-Jinny. Strange, it hadn't occurred to him to kill then,
although custom almost licensed it. Why had he killed this time?

The empty space next to him was suddenly filled and a pamphlet was
thrust into his slack hands. "Brother, you look like an intelligent man,"
said a stranger (who didn't) to him. "Leave me tell you of something which
you won't find it in no newspapers. Booze they'll advertise, yes, and filthy
tobacco, and motion pitchers dealing with murder, sex, and other
dreadful subjecks; the churches are all a them c'rupt, brotherтАФ" Ed got up
abruptly and walked into the next car.

Booze тАж murder, sexтАж corruptтАж He and Pauli had finished the gin and
this had loosened her sufficiently to admit she had some money stashed
away somewhere (but none of it had been forthcoming for him when he
had set out on his rounds earlier in the day) and they had bought some
more liquor and listened to the radio and smoked and talked and danced a
whileтАж nothing that should have ended in murder. But then nothing
should ever end in murderтАж He leaned his head on his arm and tried to
think. What had happened after that?

They had dancedтАж had they gone out anywhere? Bought more to drink?
He couldn't think. All that came to him was the sound of her breathing in
the dark. He felt the softness of her throat, felt the pulse beating, took up
the sharp knifeтАФ

The knife! What knife? Where had he found it? There wasn't a sharp
knife in the apartment; bread came ready-sliced and they ate so much out
of cans that only seldom did the lack of a knife occur to them, and nothing
was ever done about it. Had he picked up a sharp knife somewhere else?
Had they wound up in someone else's place? If the last, it must have been
an apartment where the regular tenants were away, orтАФNo, it didn't
follow. The regular tenant (he? she? they?) may have gone out, leaving
them to sleep. That would mean a separate room. And whom did they
know well enough to descend on suddenlyтАФpeople who had a separate
room? Could there have been another room, temporarily vacant, in the
dive in which he'd awakened? A dive with which Pauli was familiar and he
was not? Would he have gone to sleep in the same place he'd committed
murder? If he was drunk enough to killтАФ

The train stopped more abruptly than usual. 86th Street. Automatically