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

"Done me a favor if'n you kilt him," she said in a thin childish voice.

"There he is. Finish the job." Still combing, shifting to the other side, she looked up at me, head tilted. I had expected girl-eyes as vulnerable as the rest of her. These hazel eyes were old and cold, and with a little twist of recognition I remembered the wise old eyes of the urchins of Pusan, the eyes which remained unchanged by the appealing, begging, belly-empty smiles they gave the G.I.'s.

"Could might do jus that some time," she said. "Or somebody will. Onliest way I could get stopped from coming on over here. Hah! He jus three month from my Pa's age. But you don't kill off Waxwells. It comes out the other way around."

Boone Waxwell grunted and slowly worked himself into a sitting position, head between his knees, hands tenderly holding the tqp of his head. He peered up at us through lashes I had not noticed before, dense arid black and girlishly long.

"Look, I'm going to be going along now, hear?" the girl said.

"So you go long, Cindy." She stared down at him, shrugged, started back toward her purse and sweater.

She stopped halfway and called back to me. "Mister, he'll be thinkin on some way to bust you up when you least expeck."

"Ain't going to work on this old boy. Get on home, girl," he said.

Waxwell pulled himself up, leaning against the boat. He shook his head, put a finger in his ear and wiggled it. "You deefed me up on this side, like a little waterfall inside. And husked up my voice box. Some kind of that judo?"

"The home study course from Monkey Ward, Boo."



Cindy creaked the shed door open and went in and wheeled out a red and white Vespa scooter. She rested it on the brace, opened the package box, put her big purse and sweater inside, took out a white scarf and carefully turbanned her hair. She did not look toward us. She took the white shoes off and put them in the compartment. She jacked down on the starter and, with it running in neutral, tucked the brace up, hitched the green skirt halfway up the heavy white meat of her thighs, pushed it off and slid aboard, shifting into forward. She wobbled a little, then straightened as it increased its snoring sound, and went off through the sunshine down the shell road, the drone hanging in the air after she was gone, then fading out.

"Little young for you, isn't she?"

"The man says they big enough, they old enough. I give her the loan of that scooter bug. Cindy, she's my nearby girl this year. A nearby girl is when it's too damn much trouble to go after anything else. She lives just over this end of Marco Village. I can swing by that shacky old place and give a long, a short and a long on the car horn, and have me time to come back home here and get settled down, and then I hear that scooter bug like a hornet coming through the night, and she says she won't never again come when I honk for her, but ever time she comes on in pantin and blowin like she run the whole way stead of ridin."

"Why don't her folks stop her?"

He gave me that warm engaging grin, and a broad wink. "Maybe ten years ago it was, Cindy's daddy, Clete Ingerfeldt, him and me had a little talk about Clete's missus, and I pure liked to whip the ass clear off him. He got such a strong memory of it, I even say hello to him, his chin gets all spitty. I tell you, fat stuff got the hang of it a lot better than her old lady ever did." He gave me a stare of amazed innocence. "You come way out here to find out about my love life?"

"I came out here to talk about making some money. Like the money you made off Arthur Wilkinson."

"Now I don't recall we made a dime. If that deal went through, we were fixing to make out good. But all we ever got back was the money we put in, less the expense money that come off the top."

104



"All of a sudden, Boo, your diction improves."

He grinned. "Sometimes I had to go away for a spell. Got me exposed to the high and mighty. Got me some college women to learn me."

"If you give me another chance, I'll learn you too. It's a promise. If you get tricky one more time, I'm going to give you a strong memory like you gave Cindy's father. You're going to totter around like a very old man for a very long time."

He studied me carefully. "Lord God, you got a size on you. I shoulda looked more careful to start. From those wrists, you'll go twenty pound more than I guessed. First time I been whipped in four years. But I ain't Clete Ingerfeldt. You could bust half the bones I got, and I'd put my mind on mending up and coming after you, and you better remember it, and knowing I couldn't take you even, I'd take you any ways seems safe, take you way up Lostman's River and stuff you under the red mangrove roots for crab food, and it wouldn't be the first time I took care of some little problem that way." There was no bluff in it. It was an absolutely cold and factual statement.

"Then I'll put it another way, Boo. If you try something, and it doesn't work, I'll make sure you never get well enough to even get in and out of a boat."