"Elmore Leonard - cuba libra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leonard Elmore)

narrows.

But then pretty soon he saw a ship's mast and a tangle of metal
sticking out of the water, gulls resting on it. One of the Mexican
deckhands called to the pilot tug bringing them in, wanting to know
what the wreckage was. The pilot yelled back it was the Maine.

Yeah? The main what? Tyler's border Spanish failed to serve, trying
to make out voices raised against the wind. The deckhand told him it
was a buque de guerra, a warship.

Earlier that month he had left Sweetmary in the Arizona Territory by
rail: loaded thirty-one mares aboard Southern Pacific stock cars and
rode them all the way to Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico. Here he was
met by his partner in this

 deal, Charlie Burke, Tyler's foreman at one time, years ago. Charlie
Burke introduced him to a little Cuban mulatto-"Ben Tyler, Victor
Fuentes the man appearing to be a good sixty years old, though it was
hard to tell, his skin the color of mahogany.

Fuentes inspected the mares, none more than six years old or bigger
than fifteen hands, checked each one's conformation and teeth, Fuentes
wiping his hands on the pants of his white suit, picked twenty-five out
of the bunch, all bays, browns and sorrels, and said he was sure they
could sell the rest for the same money, one hundred fifty dollars each.
He said Mr. Boudreaux was going to like these girls and would give
them a check for thirty-seven hundred fifty dollars drawn on the Banco
de Comercio before they left Havana. Fuentes said he would expect only
five hundred of it for his services.

Tyler said to Charlie Burke, later, the deal sounded different than the
way he'd originally explained it.

Charlie Burke said the way you did business in Cuba was the same as it
worked in Mexico, everybody getting their cut. Tyler said, what he
meant, he thought they were going directly from here to Matanzas, where
Boudreaux's sugar estate was located. Charlie Burke said he thought so
too; but Boudreaux happened to be in Havana this week and next. It
meant they'd take the string off the boat, put the horses in stock pens
for the man to look at, reload them and go on to Matanzas. What Tyler
wanted to know, and Charlie Burke didn't have the answer: "Who pays for
stopping in Havana?"

That evening Charlie Burke and Mr. Fuentes left on a Ward Line steamer
bound for Havana.

It was late the next day Tyler watched his mares brought aboard the
cattle boat, the name Vamoose barely readable on its rusted hull. Next
came bales of hay and some oats, one of