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

"Like that dirty-mind cop wants to close us down, Poppa Tiger goes way upstairs and has the clout to mend his ways. Like our nephew needed the school letter that time, Poppa Tiger writes pretty. I just want to keep the free booze coming man, and tap that locker full of prime beef, and get the boat kicks."

"I knew better. I thought it would be nice to hear you say it, Mary."

"Brace up this dead drink for me, on the house. It's fat

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vodka, one cube and a smitch from the little cranberry juice can."

"Gah."

"Don't drink it, just make it."

We had some drinks, and I watched her dance, and we had some laughs because the old bear was on the mend. Frannie brought along some other kids from the club she was working. And as an unexpected by-product of celebration, I learned beyond any chance of confusion that the night dancer had been Mary La. Selections from the Tiger pack are not my usual type, as it tends to be too casual and mechanical for the ornamented romanticism of the McGee, who always wants a scarf in token to tie to the crest of the cut-rate helmet, wants the soul-torn glance, the tremors of the heart, the senseЧor the illusionЧof both choice and importance. But Mary Lo left no bad taste. She made it like a game for kids, chuckling and crooning her pleasures, and it did indeed pleasantly blur the use Wilma made of the same game. After they have strangled the king with boiling wine, it is therapeutic to get a little tipsy on a more palatable brand.

A

RTHUR fell back into my life on that Tuesday afternoon. Acquaintance rather than friend. The dividing line is communication, I think. A friend is someone to whom you can say any jackass thing that enters your mind. With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit. Many marriages are between acquaintances. You can be with a person for three hours of your life and have a friend. Another one will remain an acquaintance for thirty years.

While he slept I dug into the more remote lockers in the bow section until I found the small ragged suitcase I remembered. Girl-bought clothes for a version of McGee of long ago, when I hid out and they hunted me, and I was afraid the stink of my rotting leg would clue mem in. Killed the two of them while in delirium. No memory of how she got me to the hospital. Heard later how she managed to keep them from taking the leg off. Now there is that crooked pale arroyo, long down the right thigh, deep into muscle tissue. Function unimpaired. But a chancy time, deep there in fevers, seeing the pearly gleam of

the gates, talking to the dead brother, sometimes looking up out of a well at the professional faces bending over the bed. |

These were the clothes she brought me, the clothes in which I was wheeled out into the vivid unreal world, clothes in which I first tottered about, ten feet tall and two inches wide, certain that if I fell off the crutches I would break like a glass stork. They would fit Arthur nicely in his dwindled condition and were only slightly musty from long storage. In a housewifely mood, I hung them out to air, thinking of the money the dead ones had stolen, quite legally, from the dead brother and how, quite illegally, the girl and I had stolen it back, cut it down the middle.

While Arthur slept, I wondered how the hell to get rid of him. That was the extent of my Christian charity. I could accept being an aid station but not a convalescent clinic. I went over the composition of the group as Arthur had known it, looking for a substitute pigeon. I had my slob summer all planned. Immediately after the dry rot surgery and a few other maintenance matters, I wanted to take The Busted Flush down to Dinner Key, get her hauled and get the bottom scraped and painted, and then chug at my stately 6+ knotsЧwith a six-hundred mile range on the two 58 hp Hercules DieselsЧover to the Bahamas on a dead calm day. The 52-foot barge-type houseboat can take pretty rough weather if forced to, but she rolls so badly she tends to bust up the little servomechanisms aboard which make life lush. I had been mentally composing a guest list, limited to those random salty souls who can get away, hold their liquor, endure sunshine, make good talk, swim the reefs, navigate, handle the lines, slay food fish and appreciate the therapeutic value of silence. It is the McGee version of being a lonerЧmerely having some people about to whom you don't have to constantly react. Arthur did not fit that specification closely enough.

When darkness came, I took the aired clothes below and put them on a chair in the guest stateroom. He was snoring in a muted way. I closed his door, fixed myself a Plymouth gin on the rocks, closed the lounge curtains, looked up Chookie McCall's number. No answer. I hadn't seen her or heard anything about her in two months. I tried Hal, the bartender at the

Mile O'Beach who keeps good track of our gypsy contingent of entertainers. Hal said she'd been working at Bernie's East up to May first when they closed the Brimstone Room, and as far as he knew all she was doing was a Saturday morning one-hour show of dance instruction on KLAK-TV. But he had it on good authority she was all set to regroup her six pack and open back at the Mile O'Beach in the Bahama Room come November 15th.

"Hal, is Frank Durkin back yet?"

"Back yet! Don't sit on your hands until he gets back. Dint you hear what they got him on?"

"Only that he took a fall."

"It was assault with intent to kill, or felonious assault or whatever the hell they call it. Three to five up in Raiford, and you can bet Frankie will get smartass with those screws up there and they will keep him for the five. Chook goes up to see him once a month. She'll be making a lot of trips. All that woman could find something better, McGee, and you know it. She don't get any younger."

"Younger? Hell, she's only twenty-five at the most."

"Ten years in the entertainment business, and thirty when they turn Frankie Durkin loose. It adds up, Trav. If I was trying to locate her tonight, I think maybe Muriel Hess would be a good bet. She's in the book. They've been working together on material for when she starts up here in the fall."

I thanked him and tried the number. Chook was there. "What's on your mind, stranger?"

"Buying a steak for the dancing girl."

"Plural?"