"Ron Goulart - Subject To Change" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

Subject to Change



Subject to Change
By Ron Goulart
PENDLETON HAD BEEN away from San Francisco over two months. The airport taxi left him at his
place, where he showered and shaved. Then he decided he would walk, down through Chinatown and
over into North Beach, to Beth's apartment.

It was a warm Saturday afternoon and he unbuttoned his dacron blazer a block or so into Chinatown. He
smiled as he wandered by the bright restaurants and shops, the rows of ivory Buddhas in window after
window. On one corner Pendleton stopped and took a deep breath, watching a scattering of tourists
taking pictures of each other. Someone had lost a half dozen fortune cookies on the sidewalk and they
crackled and spread fragments and fortunes as people passed.

While he was waiting for a signal to change, three small Chinese boys charged a fourth who had ducked
around Pendleton. They all ran around the comer and Pendleton looked after them. There was an old
curio and toy shop there. He went toward its streaked window, trying to identify the objects. Some kind
of procession of tin soldiers made up the main display. The door of the shop opened and an old man with
a flared white beard came out. His dark suit hung loose on him and his tie was coming untied as he
hurried away.

The old man brushed by Pendleton, nudging him. "Many pardons," he said, cutting across the street. He
ran downhill, weaving a little, and into an alley.

The bells over the toy shop door rattled again. "Stop, thief!" shouted the fat Chinese, who came running
up to Pendleton. The man shouted again and stopped on the corner, his hands on his hips, looking.

Pendleton crossed the street and turned down the alley the old man had used. This would cut off a block
of the way to Beth's. He had kept quiet about the thief because he didn't want to get involved in a lot of
delaying questioning.

Halfway down the alley he saw an arm dangling out of a garbage can. Pendleton blinked and approached
the shadowed area around the can. He flipped the lid up and the coat sleeve that had been tangled on the
edge slipped free and dropped into the can. If the old man was wandering around naked, they shouldn't
have much trouble catching him.

Pendleton liked the pre-quake apartment house Beth lived in. In almost any weather he liked to see its
narrow, brown wood front waiting there in the middle of the block. He smiled as a big blue-gray gull
flew low overhead and then circled up and away behind Beth's building. Pendleton took the rough steps
in twos and threes and swung at Beth's bell. There was a folded note for him glued on her mailbox lid

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 Subject to Change

with Scotch tape. It told him she might be delayed a bit and to get her keys from under the rubber-plant
pot on the porch and let himself in. He did that, thinking again that Beth's notes always looked as though
she wrote them on horseback.