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

"Lots of traffic, Jimbo? I threw out with the cigar label while grabbing the Charleston Standard morning edition.
"Gams and grifters, Mr Levine ," he rumbled sucking a dead coffee filter from the machine and double-loading the next one - a liquid hi-brass shotgun shell, "and one blond guy with white teeth who missed the train for Hollywood."
"Hollywood, huh ... crew cut?"
"Yeah, how did you know?"
"The latest fashion, Jimbo ... ya gotta read the trades ..." Fucking Saul ... I chewed at the coffee - caffeine bit back like an ex-wife and I looked more careful at Jimbo steaming away ... eight-out'a-ten maybe ... and I riffled the paper. Beauty contest front page. Second page another barrier island developer acquitted of everything but snatching stray Pelican feathers. Yankees beat Cleveland again no crap and TOOT-MY-HORN faded at the eighth-pole ... another fifty oh Jeez. Eighth page last column made my eye-balls bleed caffeine ...
... AND CHARLESTON POLICE REPORT A WOMAN'S BODY WAS
FOUND LAST NIGHT FLOATING NEAR THE DOCKS AT THE
CITADEL MARINA CLUB. NO CAUSE OF DEATH OR IDENTIFICATION
HAS BEEN ...
No cause, huh ... no ID ... coppers know nothing or were saying nothing say it ain't so ... I dropped two-bits on the counter, folded the rag with no big show under my arm and stuffed it into my raincoat. Jimbo hacked butane flame at his Habanos.
"Pretty much a usual crowd, Mr Levine" he rapped. "All the PIs, back-n'-forth like they gotta lott'a business. Coupl'a shysters in early and working girls dropped in ta fish out the lunch crowd. Blo-N-go if ya catch my drift."
Out came the rag for another read - folding that article into a pocket I turned to the comix page. "Any luck?"
"The girls? Coupl'a fish ... like I sez a pretty normal morning." We both bit on the coffee and scowled. Then Jimbo said "oh yeah, two flat-feet made the rounds about 7 AM ... plain-clothes types, with a good professional creep, but the gal copper could'a sent postcards. Shiny black pumps ... what dame wears those any more, and a bulge on her ass ... nice ass, but must'a been a 357-caliber she was packing."
"And the man?"
"Wore a white bunny-suit ... white linen, I think and a straw Panama. Fancy Italian leather shoes. I never seen either one before."
"So not looking for anything in particular?"
"Them types always are, Mr Levine, but ... think about it, there was a weird, hippy broad that came in about 6 AM just after I opened. Had an espresso, paid with a yard imagine that and kind'a floated out. Maybe they wuz looking for her - now she was lookin'!"
"For what?"
"Beat me, Mr Levine. But ya know how a dame has those wide-eye peepers when she ain't just window-shoppin'"
"She leave a tip for the info?"
"Info-crap!" Jimbo sucked black bitter to the bottom. "Hell-no-in-a-harpoon. I ain't no flounder gotta make bubbles every time a gig goes sticking around the sandpile. Nobody here and that's me too lives fat in this building, but I gotta eat twice-a-day and that's when I open the mouth."
"You and me, Jimbo."
"Yeah, we both seen the world ..." He lit a small, black cheroot half-smoked from behind the counter. "You're a PI, Mr Levine. You know all that mean street crapola. I been on those mean streets, and though I'm passin' through that's all I don't see people leave who try makin' it eat twice-a-day."
"That's negative, Jimbo, like electricity jumps from the clouds. How mean do ya figure for State & Broad?"
"Mean as a piss-whipped alligator tryn' ta screw a stoned water moccasin."
"I never seen a stoned snake, Jimbo, so maybe us smart ones make it. We're crows round the fat pig."
"Not crows, Mr Levine ... cause we never squawk on an empty stomach."
* * * * *
Some fat crow ... three-bills in the wallet I should'a put 'em in a museum and I felt fat ... too fat ta worry about Knobweiler's photos. Four sucks later on the Habanos, and a stomach full of black bitter I pushed through glass front doors into a driving, Charleston thunderstorm. Two blocks down Broad to the bank then lunch I figured, before calling the detective. Had ta call DeLeon ... tell him something ... The storm wrapped water to my knees and trench around my face so I didn't see the frail till she dove across the street out of a puddle and into me like I was an umbrella and she the last dry shoulder in Charleston. We slammed against stucco wall.
Then she hit me with blue-eyed saucers and machine-gunned away. "Are ... are you ... you ... are you Sammy ... Sammy-the-Mole?"
"Not since I shot the last dame called me that, sister. Should I make it two-fer-two?"
Her voice gulped down ..."but I need ... I mean I heard ..." and tried pushing away - I stopped that fast. "And you got all of that, sister. What's your beef?" She had affections that wouldn't alienate a sick alligator ... either one ... not that I noticed. She wore jeans and a yellow, fisherman's slicker common to barrier islands and hard, hard rough hands that had dug more oysters out'a pluff-mud than Rockefeller had clams. Maybe too, she had a story - maybe too, she had a few too many clams from all that digging. I let her scramble away, to the street corner where swill from a passing hotel limo washed over her sandals and she stood there swearing wet hell and a sailor's death on all who drove by.
I couldn't remember last time I rescued a damsel ... but I think she stole my wallet. Not this one, in the shrink-to-fits and where-could-it-go but boy could she swear ..." you rat-bastard-fuck-don't-just stand there and watch me drown do gawddamit something ...!" Then the sky really opened up, like a white sheet falling.
How blind was I like bats-in-a-loud-speaker while I swooped down to the kerb and threw her over my shoulder dashing across State Street toward Polly's Parrot Bar I did a calculation that said her at five-feet-eleven healthy as an eel and me five-six stretched bare-naked it could not be done. We ran the last half-block.
By the third martini we had dried out, sobered up like most Charleston judges and gotten past first names. And I had got up to my knickers in Isle of Palms perv.
" ... and when I called him a rat-bastard-fuck Island coke-head he slammed out the door. Three AM yesterday morning and that was the last time I saw him."
"Husbands will do that, Loretta, when their wives call them ..."
"That isn't the first time I nailed TJ, but he's never stayed gone two mornings."
"Most women worry about the nights."
"TJ has a fourteen year old girlfriend. They can only screw when she leaves home in the morning for Junior High."
"Loretta, that's mighty understanding of you, but it's also some kind of a crime."
"You tell me, Mr Levine ... they never use rubbers. And that ain't the worst. He left the bath-tub full of LSD so I can't take a shower. His blotter-acid paper is locked in a safe ... nice purple-dragon design so ... what a waste ..."
"That, too, is some kind of crime. What do you want me to do?"
"Get the rat-bastard-fuck back home. Everybody says Sammy Levine's the-mole, the-bed-weasel, the best rat-trap in town - for husbands that are rats."
"I get $200-a-day plus expenses ... T-bone lunch-steaks are expenses ... rented convertibles are expenses ... ya paid for these martinis already ..."
"Would you take a pint of acid each week? Bet it's worth more and TJ's got absolutely gallons in the attic!."
"Now here we are again, with some kinda crime. I gotta tell you sister ya can't shoot-em-straight with a bent barrel. And you haven't told me where TJ was headed if anyplace just after he left your house."
"Does he haf'ta go someplace?"
"Unless he slept in the street."
"He's done that ... not in the street, that is ... the place he and the girlfriend always go ... to the Ashley River ... to the canoe-launch right behind the Citadel."