"Hartman, Ray - Charleston Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hartman Ray)

Charleston Blues
by Ray Hartman
Copyright й 2001


Drier Mondays I seen in a massage parlor with bust hot-water-pipes, and the dame client - she itched like Chinese health-needles ... for this I keep a good downtown Charleston address: Four-Corners-of-the-Law ... State and Broad or like cabbies call it grift-and-fraud I wouldn't know about fraud but some shysters sharing the office suite do: The sign sez Sammy Levine, PI;. Fifth floor; Allreed Building. Office suites, yeah ... I got a room and a bar and a crapper. Beside the larger window a battered, grey-metal desk comes with the rug. Both chairs I bought - my own break-a-back oak swivel, and a leather lounge for the client. Singular. Like the dame now, pumping blueberry silk shorties.
Jeez it was hot. Rain fell heavy all morning. It stank ozone like a cheap air freshener stinks in a closed attic. Curtains of offshore lightening slashed over Charleston harbor blowing jumpy white streaks through the window, but the dame wasn't jumping out after them ...
"Those photos are useless to me, Mr Levin."
"You said nude, I shot nude. You said sex, I shot sex. If you wanted beard and beard only, I'd have flown to the Vatican and shot DaVinci."
She slouched deeper into the leather lounge and her face-hardened. "Beard?"
"A technical term, Mrs Knobweiler."
Thunder rolled through the window and lights flickered. The leggy frail in blue and a box hat made frantic, pawing movements with bare toes - go figure on a rainy day bare toes both they and the stacked heels were blue. She was working on me. "What a horrible little man you are. I should have hired a North Charleston PI. I never should have trusted ..."
I looked once again at the glossies. "Did I or did I not photograph your husband 'in flagrante' with babs-the-bimbo?"
"Babs? Oh spare me the humor please ..." The frail making the lounger rock - one South-of-Broad matron named Mona Knobweiler groaned piteously. "I said three photos, not two ya weasel-nosed little bastard and full-frontal ... can I spell that for you Mr. Levin? F-u-l-l f-r-o-n-t-a-l . Or do you need a dictionary ...?" She slipped silk gams, snatched one of the glossies and walked contemptuously to the window overlooking County Courthouse, staring down at State Street lunch hour traffic easing along steaming, rain-slick asphalt. "Do I care what the slut-nosed bitch's ass looks like?" She whorled around. "Not tight as mine, that's for damned sure and if I hadn't ... well ... say something Mr Levin. Speak up, but only if you have any remote conception of getting a check ... oh, I bet you spell that word just fine Mr Levine. My c-h-e-c-k billing the second half of your outrageous fees. Well ...?"
Sweat inch-wormed from my collar. "Like I tried to explain, Mrs Knobweiler, your husband and the, ah ... woman-in-question weren't having traditional sex, and from where I took the pictures I had a hell-of-a time focusing as much ass as I did."
She held the glossy up to the window, like images might be hiding on the other side. "Appears to me, Mr Levin, you focused more on cruising Charleston Harbor than photographing the bimbo's tits ... her knockers, Mr Levin ... the bouncing boobs of a husband stealing bitch ..."
"Yeah, well, the boat was bouncing too ... boobs just happened to be on the other side."
"And of course you did nothing to make her turn around ..."
"She seemed quietly occupied. Doesn't ass count at all?"
"Not hers, not now," snaked out. "The divorce I will win - any time, Mr Levine and for a dozen reasons, though the cotton-mouth bastard does have his connections. Why ... the snake didn't even come home this morning. But the alienation-of-affection suit against that slut - well, I'm a realist Mr Levine."
"Ever consider a plastic surgeon?"
Her steel-grey eyes drilled me. "We all work with what God gives us ... what man ever left a woman for an ass worse than the one he currently uses? It's her tits, tits, tits that lured that wastrel of a husband from my bed and that woman's going to pay! If YOU can only take those pictures ... oh dear ... oh my ..."
I fished my hank from a breast-pocket and passed it over. Dry it was ... wet it got fast. I thought she might break fingernails sobbing. She half-opened the window, in steaming gusts of humidity, breathed deep and again whorled her speciality like lemon eclairs facing me down ... then gammed cross the oak floor that once had been waxed and planted not the worse ass SOB alongside my feet propped up on the leather desktop.
"Won't you try just once more to get what I need, Mr. Levin? Can it be so impossible, and ... and I would be so ... so eternally grateful."
She dropped the wet hank over my Dock-Sides and from inside her green silk blouse slipped a check and tucked it under my heel. The check showed three zeros and where it was now had more company than where it came from. Kinda felt sorry for her - like I felt sorry for a water mocassin having shorter fangs than rattlesnakes. Her eyelashes both batted. Batted about .200 in double-A I figured if ya hung the curve-balls ...
She went for her raincoat still dripping beside the office door. "You have my unlisted number, Mr Levin. Call me anytime after eight."
"And if the husband gets wise?"
"He's a coward at heart, Mr Levine. Always has been." But not you, sister, no way ... "I'll do what I can, Mrs Knobweiler," I said and she flounced through the door leaving it swinging helplessly open on a broken spring. Charleston humidity slammed in after her. Open window ... open door ... open invitation ... the check had a 3 scratched in before the three zeros and I counted myself lucky. After locking glossies in a safe my dentist could drill I closed the window, tucked a 32-caliber belly-gun under my trench, snatched straw fedora from the wall and slammed the door behind me.
* * * * *
Our foyer had nice hanging plants and a wool carpet that had missed a cleaning last year and centered six offices around a large, circular check-in desk. The ferns were rootbound and dried out. The doors had been mahogany in 1944. Six office doors ... two PIs, four attorneys all specializing in divorce like married sex was a crime of passion. That book I could have written twice ...
"Oh Mr. Levine, Mr Levine your bookie just called," crowed Doris the answering girl for all offices in Suite number four ...
"Call him back pronto, Doris. Put fifty on LAST LEGS in the 5th at Santa Anita."
"He sea...ays ,,, you still owe two-fifty from last week ... he's gonna call a collector ..."
"Yeh, yeh, yeh ... tell him LAST LEGS is a lock ... I'll make it all back with change."
"I know what he's gonna sea..ay Mr Levine." Doris primped. "He's gonna say that's what you said last time ... and ya have three real messages. You said hold all telephone calls this morning."
"Cough 'em out, Doris, but hold the chorus" I wheezed like nags ain't real and reached over the divider for the fresh pack of Doris' Pall Mall Reds. She smacked my hand ... I got the smoke ..
Doris flashed the Zippo toward the end of the Red. "I said three calls, but there was a fourth, really the first one just after I got in this morning. Some wailing frail - I couldn't make 2-cents worth'a sense from her babble so I don't count that as a message." Doris then rattled after the grey cloud. "Some-one from Naval Pawn & Loan ... calling again! What a' creep. He said the Rolex was about to get sold ..."
"Sold! My Rolex ...?" I got a wrist too small ta be bare ... it itched, after only a month, but the three zeros in my pocket I'd get that back today. "Next!"
Doris lit her own Red. "I recognized that voice, Mr Levine ... your toitsy Brother-in-Law Saul Davidson. He wants ta meet you for lunch - said break-a-leg ... or he will ... funny guy for a Brother-in-Law, hum Mr Levine?"
Saul ... I wouldn't say two words to that bastard ... not crap-face ... "And whose on third, Doris?"
She hung the Red lazy, from pink, pouty lips. "That's a new one fer me, Mr Levine. Some copper ...a Detective Nick DeLeon? I think that's the name."
DeLeon ... Lieutenant Nick DeLeon. "What did the copper want?"
"He mentioned the Citadel boat-dock and a floater ... must be a canoe on the loose, huh Mr Levine? Then he says don't call too soon, but don't call tomorrow."
DeLeon ... homicide detective ... if chops had pain, Nicky was a dental tool ... "Yeah, must be a canoe ... thanks Doris."
"Mr Levine, I've worked here five years, for PIs and shysters and I ain't never heard of a Detective DeLeon." Doris dropped the pink-stained cigarette to the ashtray and scribbled a note it better be ta the bookie and say LAST LEGS not FAST LEGS what a loser it's last three starts on the outside but Doris sings. "The only DeLeon I know is a lady who writes the Ms Peepers gossip column for the Charleston Standard. But she's an upper class broad. Couldn't be a copper's wife. Couldn't be the same DeLeon, could it?"
Not after she married him I thought. And Nicky wouldn't show around here - he didn't sweat domestic violence. I hacked at the Red hungry. "Same DeLeon no way Jose, Doris. See ya after lunch and remember F-A-S-T"
"Yeah, Mr Levine, I got it written down f-a-s-t have a kosher ham-n-egg fer me."
* * * * *
Saul-the-bastard served nothing but ... I flew down stairs, and in the lobby stopped at the smoke-shop to cool heels over bitter, black coffee and a cigar labeled Tampa in faded, yellow print and Havana in smooth, long, sweet brown ash. Call it caution, or paranoid or maybe ham-n-eggs just didn't settle right in early afternoon.
"Black, hot and bitter - just like ya like it Mr Levine " said Jimbo behind the stained marble counter chewing a Habanos dead weeks ago and returning slick-hand five from a ten. Ex-Navy, Jimbo ... maybe five-out'a-ten like the bill and I tucked it under the ashtray. Lobby traffic went back-and-forth and the floor not just wet but soppy.