"MacDonald, John - Travis McGee 06 - Bright Orange for the Shroud" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Miners get silicosis. Doctors get coronaries. Bankers get ulcers. Politicians get strokes. Remember about the alligators? Honey, if nothing happened to people, we'd all be ass-deep in people."

"And I should see what happened to the other guys. Okay, you can't be serious." She marched off, and went down the ladderway like a... a dancer going down a ladderway.

I could be serious in that particular area, but not on her terms. I'd had enough stitches to make a quilt, and had enjoyed not one of them at all, at all. And most floor nurses have a top sergeant syndrome. I went below and packed the promised pipe. Chook was in the stainless steel galley, banging pots. I went through to the guest stateroom where I had quartered myself. Chook had made that decision while we were provisioning the boat, when she brought her gear aboard. She had declared flatly that she wasn't going to mouse around. All three of us

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knew she'd slept with Arthur before his marriage, and the huge bed in the master stateroomЧthe bed that had been there when I'd won the boatЧgave her a better chance to keep watch over him, and if he wanted to make something of it, then she was willing to be compliant on the basis of therapy, affection, old time's sake, moraleЧcall it whatever the hell you feel like calling it, McGee.

I had told her I avoided putting names on things whenever possible, and I transferred my personal gear and went back to the hot greasy chore of smoothing out the port engine which, after too much idleness, was running hesitantly, fading when I gave it more throttle, complaining that it wanted its jets cleaned.

By mid-evening, Arthur Wilkinson felt better. It was a soft night. We sat in three deck chairs on the afterdeck, facing the long path of silver moonlight on the black water.

I overpowered his reluctance and made him go over some of the stuff he had already told me, interrupting him with questions to see if I could unlock other parts of his memory.

"Like I told you, Trav, I had the idea we were going to go farther away, maybe the southwest, but after we stayed overnight in Naples, she said maybe it would be nice to rent a beach house for a while. Because it was April we could probably find something nice. What she found was nice, all right. Isolated, and a big stretch of private beach, and a pool. It was seven hundred a month, plus utilities. That included the man who came twice a week to take care of the grounds, but then there was another two hundred and fifty for the woman who came in about noon every day but Sunday."

"Name?"

"What? Oh... Mildred. Mildred Mooney. Fifty, I'd guess. Heavy. She had a car and did the marketing and cooking and housework. She'd serve dinner and then leave and do the dishes when she came the next day. So it came to maybe twelve hundred a month for operating expenses. And about that much again for Wilma. Hairdresser and dressmaker, cosmetics, mail orders to Saks, Bonwits, places like that. Masseuse, a special wine she likes. And shoes. God, the shoes! So say in round

figures there's twenty-five hundred a month going out, which would be thirty thousand a year, three times what was coming in. After wedding expenses, and trading for the convertible, I had five thousand cash aside from the securities, but it was melting away so fast it scared me. I estimated it would be gone before the end of June."

"You tried to make her understand?"

"Of course. Wilma would stare at me as if I was talking Urdu. She couldn't seem to comprehend. It made me feel cheap and small-minded. She said it wasn't any great problem. In a little while I could start looking around and find something where I could make all the money we'd ever need. I was worriedЧbut it was all kind of indistinct. The only thing that really seemed to count was just... having her. In the beginning, it was so damned... wonderful."

"But it changed?"

"Yes. But I don't want to talk about that."

"Later?"

"Maybe. I don't know. It all turned into something... quite different. I don't want to try to explain it."

"If i left?"Chook said.

"No. Thanks, but that wouldn't make any difference."

"Get on with it then. When was the first contact with the land syndicate people?"

"Late May. She'd gone walking down the beach in the late afternoon, and she came back with Calvin Stebber. Some kid had hooked a shark and as he was fighting it and beaching it with people watching him. That's how she got in casual conversation with him, and it turned out they knew a lot of the same people, so she brought him back for a drink. Short and heavy and very tan. Always smiling. I'd say he wasn't much over forty, but he looked older. And he seemed... important. They jabbered away about people I've read about. Onassis, Niarchos, people like that. He was very vague about what he was doing. He just said that he'd come down to work out a small project, but it was dragging on a lot longer than he'd estimated. He seemed... fond of Wilma. He wished us happiness.

"After he left, Wilma got quite excited. She told me that Calvin Stebber was enormously rich and went around making

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