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

"Was it all legal?"

"I don't know. At least legal enough so that you'd probably have a three-year court fight to prove it wasn't, and then it would be only a civil action to recover the funds. He can't finance that. He couldn't finance two cups of coffee."

"Can you do anything?"

"I could try. If you can prop him up a little, I can try."

She stood up and came over and gave me a quick hug, a kiss beside the eye, and told me I was a treasure. Long after she left, the treasure lifted a few score aches and sorenesses and went to bed.

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L

LATE Sunday afternoon, up on the sundeck, I got the rest of the account from Arthur Wilkinson. Chook had him heavily oiled against additional burn. She was using the sun-deck rail as a torture rack, and I was pleased to turn so that I could not see her. I had taken so much punishment all day, it hurt to watch her. But over Arthur's recital I could sometimes hear her little gasps of effort, a creak of a joint strained to the maximum, and even that was mildly upsetting.

Arthur had gotten absolutely no satisfaction from the young lawyer. He had offered to sell Watts his syndicate shares for twenty-five thousand. Crane Watts said he wasn't interested. Next, in a kind of bemused desperation, he had tried to find Boone Waxwell, had learned that Waxwell had a place at Good-land on Marco Island. With the last of the small amount of money he had taken on the Sarasota trip, he had taken a bus to the turnoff to Marco, had hitched a ride to the island bridge, and then had walked to Goodland. At a gas station they told him how to find Waxwell's cottage. He got there at sunset. It was an isolated place at the end of a dirt road, more shack than

cottage. A pale gray sedan was parked in the yard. Country music was so loud over the radio they didn't hear him on the porch, and when he looked through the screen he saw Wilma sprawled naked, tousled and asleep on a couch, and with a particular vividness he remembered her pale blonde head resting on a souvenir pillow from Rock City. Boo Waxwell, in underwear shorts, sat slumped by the little radio, bottle on the floor between his feet, trying to play guitar chords along with the radio music. He saw Arthur and grinned at him, and came grinning to the screen door, opened it and pushed Arthur back, asking him what the hell he wanted. Arthur said he wanted to speak to Wilma. Waxwell said there wasn't much point in that on account of Wilma had gotten herself a temporary divorce, country-style.

Wilma had then appeared in the doorway beside Waxwell, light of the sunset against her face, a small and delicate face puffy with sleep and satiation, eyes drained empty by bed and bottle, nestling in soiled housecoat into the hard curve of Boo Waxwell's arm, looking out at him with a placid and almost bovine indifference, outlined in that end-of-day glow against the room darkening behind her.

He said it was strange how vivid the little things were, the precise design in faded blue of an eagle clutching a bomb, wavering as the muscles of Waxwell's upper arm shifted under the tattoed hide. The irregular deep rose shade of a suckmark on the side of Wilma's delicate throat. And tiny rainbow glintings from the diamonds of the watch on her wristЧthe watch she had claimed she sold in Miami.

Then he knew that it had all been lies, all of it, with nothing left to believe. Like an anguished, oversized child, he had rushed at Waxwell to destroy him, had landed no blow, had been pummelled back, wedged into a corner of porch post and railing, felt all the grinding blows into gut and groin and, over Waxwell's diligent shoulder had seen the woman small in the doorway, hugging herself and watching, underlip sagging away from the small even teeth. Then the railing gave way and he fell backward into the yard. He got up at once and slowly walked back the way he had come, hunched, both forearms clamped across his belly. He had the feeling that it was the only thing

41

holding him together. His legs felt feathery, floating him along with no effort. Somewhere along the dirt road to the cottage he had fallen. He could not get up. He felt as if something was shifting and flowing inside him, the life moving warmly out of him. He would have slept, except for mosquitoes so thick he breathed them in, snuffing them from his nose, blowing them from his lips. He squirmed to a tree and pulled himself upright and went on, trying all the time to straighten himself up a little more. By the time he got to the bridge he was almost straight. There was a pink glow left in the west. He began the long walk back to the trail and for a time he was all right, and then he began falling. He said it was very strange. He would find himself way out by the center line, and then when he went over to the shoulder, a dark bush would seem to leap up at him and he would land heavily, gasping.

An old pickup truck stopped as he was trying to get up, and they came and put a bright flashlight beam on him, and from far away he heard a man and woman discussing in casual nasal tones how drunk he was and from what.

Summoning the last of energy, he said very distinctly, "I'm not drunk. I've been beaten."

"Whar you want we should take you, mister?" the man asked.

"I've got no place to go."

When things came back into focus, he was between the man and the woman on the front seat of the pickup. They took him home. East on the Trail to the turnoff to Everglades City, through Everglades and across the causeway to Chokoloskee Island, and over to the far shore, where these people named Sam and Leafy Dunning lived with their five kids in a trailer and attached cottage and prefab garage. He learned later they had spent a picnic day over on Marco Beach, and when they had picked him up, the five kids and the picnic gear and beach gear were in the bed of the old pickup.

Sam Dunning, in season, operated a charter boat out of the Rod and Gun Club over at Everglades City. It was out of season, and he was netting commercial with a partner, even shares, using an old bay skiff.

For three days Arthur could hobble about like an old man.

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All he could keep down were the soups she fixed for him. He slept a great deal, sensing it was in part an aftermath of the beating, and partly the emotional exhaustion of what had happened to him. He slept by day in a string hammock in the side yard, and by night on a mattress in the garage, waking often to find the children staring solemnly at him.

Leafy borrowed old clothes from a neighbor, big enough to fit him, while she washed and cleaned and mended what he'd been wearing. He thought that it was the fourth day before she asked him any questions at all, came out into the yard when he was walking around in the afternoon, feeling a little steadier on his feet. There were pieces of old car and pieces of marine engine in the yard, coarse grass half hiding them. He sat in the shade of the live oak tree on an overturned dinghy, and Leafy leaned against the trunk, arms folded, head tilted, a wiry, faded, bright-eyed woman in khaki pants and a blue work shirt, visibly pregnant.