"Robinson, Spider - Lady Slings The Booze" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

So I missed the big Math final at ten, and with all the fuss afterward, everybody feeling sort of sony for me-and a little grossed Out by what had happened to my uncle-Mr. Cathcart never got around to making me make it up, so I ended up passing Math that semester. And it was that very night, after I thought over everything I'd seen and heard of the cops who responded that morning, that I made - the decision to become a private detective instead of a cop when I grew up. I'd been trying to make up my mind since I was six. So it was a memorable day. Add all the pluses and minuses and take an average, you'd have to say it was a pretty good day all in all. Kind of rough on Uncle Louie, of course. And it ruined that table. But it turned me away from a life of crime.
Well, serious crime.
Anyway, the point I started out to make is: can you imagine what I felt like when I came downstairs and saw Uncle Louie like that? Tremendously scared and nauseous and excited all at the same time? Heart banging and buzzing in my ears and dry mouth and shaky knees? Knowing there was really nothing to be afraid of any more, but still scared to death, feeling more like a thirteen-year-old than usual? But at the same time almost happy at getting to see something like that, knowing that now I'd have a real, gruesome, Mike Hammer kind of story to tell all the guys, already planning how to tell it?
Well, that's just how I felt that night twenty years later, walking up the long curving driveway to that damned mansion.
This was exactly the kind of opportunity I'd been praying for- and I was so scared I was nauseous, or possibly the other way around. Feeling like more of a thirteen-year-old than usual. That particular mix of feelings made me think of Uncle Louie for the first time in years, and I heard going through my head the same words I'd said to myself that morning when I'd found him. God, please don't let me do anything to fuck this up. This time. I just managed to stop myself short of promising to make a novena again-which I hadn't even followed through on the last time. I kept walking toward the mansion, concentrating on looking bored.
Just as I was approaching the door, I pressed my left arm against me, intending to take a little comfort from the solid presence of my gun. But there's something about those trench coats they never seem to mention in the books or movies. There's a lot of extra material under the armpits that doesn't really need to be there, all bunched up. I've tried a dozen different brands, and they're all like that. So squeezing the gun; was a mistake. And doing it right by the door was bad, because of the black-and-white sitting by the door. Never wake up cops by dropping a .45 on the pavement next to them. Especially not there.
So there was some conversation, and they let me live, and I returned the favor. Reluctantly: the skinny one had a laugh exactly like a mule braying-hee!...hee!...hee!-and the fat one... Well, anyway, by the time I entered the mansion I was flustered on top of everything else.
So if you want to know what the place looks like inside, you'll have to look it up someplace. I kept telling myself to look around and memorize it for my memoirs some day, but I kept forgetting. I had a lot on my mind. There were a lot of big moms, I remember, and a lot of stairs, and a hell of a lot of carpet everywhere, so thick it was like walking on a furry sponge mattress. I wanted to take off my shoes. I promised myself I would on the way out.
The butler was black as Lenny Bruce's humor and so old I wanted to ask him how the boat ride had been. He didn't, offer to take my trench coat or fedora. He moved like that Lincoln robot Disney had at the World's Fair if there'd been a brownout. He went up stairs one at a time instead of one after the other. He stopped outside a big door with an elaborate frame and turned to me. "You are armed, sir," he said gravely. It wasn't quite a question.
"Isn't everybody?"
He held out his hand. I shrugged. . . and squeezed my left arm against me. The gun sank an inch into the carpet with a plop.
He waited, without changing expression.
I sighed, and dropped the sap and the brass knuckles on the carpet beside the gun. "Fluoroscope in the foyer?" I asked. "Or just a metal detector? Professional interest."
He waited patiently, hand still outstretched.
I shrugged again, and added the switchblade to the pile on the floor.
"We are running late, sir," he said sadly.
I stood on one foot, took the little .22 holdout from the ankle holster, and placed it on his upturned palm. It usually gets by: no metal parts. "The only other weapon I have on me," I said, "is attached. But I promise not to touch it."
He didn't even frown at the crudity. He looked at the pistol, dropped it on the carpet with the rest of the swag, and swept it all delicately to one side with one foot. Х It left a trail in the carpet.
"While I'm here," I qualified.
He ignored that too. "Thank you, sir. This way, please. He's expecting you."
He opened the door, announced me, stepped aside so I could enter, and left, closing the big door soundlessly behind him.

WELL, you know what he looks like. He looked like that.
"You're doing okay," I told him.
He frowned at me. He'd had his mouth open to speak and I'd derailed him. "Excuse me?"
"Sorry. I just thought you might ask me how you-never mind. What can I do for you?" I was being overeager. The whole trick to being a smartass detective is to let them give you the straight lines, and then come back with the snappy zingers.
He stared at me impassively for a while. Then when he did start to speak again he paused for a moment with his mouth open to see ill was going to interrupt again. I waited for my straight line. I thought about a cigarette, but there was no point: there were ashtrays visible.
"Are you sure you're not French?" is what he finally said.
Maybe Bogie could have come up with a clever response to that. The best I could do was to say, "Excuse me?" just the way he had.
"Like in those panther flicks?" he amplified.
I blinked. "Excuse me?" I said again, and I'd like to see Travis McGee do better.
"Not related to that Inspector Clazoo or whatever it is?"
I understood now. It was my destiny to spend the rest of my life saying "Excuse me?" to an old bald Jew with a face like a dissipated elf. All right, so be it. "Excuse me?"
He shook his head. "I guessnot. But I could have sworn he was a relative of yours. You're just like him, Quigley."
"In what way?" It wasn't much, but at least it wasn't "Excuse me?"
"Two ways. You're a moron. And you're unbelievably lucky."
At last I got it. He was referring to that Inspector Clouseau guy in the Pink Panther movies, who keeps blundering his way into success.
Things were looking up, in the sense that he had finally uttered a comprehensible sentence. But it certainly wasn't a very promising start to the conversation. I mean, I had expected a certain difficulty in establishing mutual respect. .PIs get used to the fact that most people-and nearly all their clients-privately consider them one or two steps above athlete's foot in the food chain. But having someone start out by telling me that I was a moron was sort of a new low in customer relations.
And besides, he had it exactly backwards. I'm a genius, with incredibly bad luck.
"You know," I said, "I just figured out how come you manage to get elected. It's been puzzling me."
"Flattering my constituents, you mean?"
"No. Being able to say a sentence like that. It's your voice. You sound exactly like Elmer Fudd after speech therapy finally conquered the lisp. People want you to succeed. They feel you've got it coming, after overcoming forty years of being humiliated by a bunny."
You don't ever want to play poker with him. He did nothing at all for ten seconds. But it wasn't like turning to stone; It was more like he was still listening to me say something, concerning which ~he had formed no opinion so far. When he did speak, it was as though someone had rolled the tape backwards three lines of dialogue and restarted it.
"Let me give you an example of what I mean," he said reasonably. "You believe all the 'crap you read in detective
books. That makes you medium dumb as citizens go-but for a licensed private investigator in the City of New York, that
makes you compare unfavorably with a newborn gerbil. You're not only big enough and tough enough to wrestle a gorilla, you're stupid enough to try. You actually think you can come in here and smartmouth me like a TV private eye, and all I can do about it is hope I catch you red-handed in a felony sometime before the last commercial. Somewhere in your head you know I can wipe myself with your license anytime I want, but still you come in here and get fresh with me. That's the moron part I spoke of." He was speaking calmly, illustrating his points with small gestures, sure he could make a reasonable man like me understand. "As to the lucky part...well, that should be self-evident. You've lived this long. But as a more immediate example, there is a chance, practically a good chance, that you could end up walking away from this with your freedom, your license and your health. Who could believe such a thing? I know: but there it is." He spread his hands expressively.
I decided I had established myself as a smartass. A really tough guy deals with intimidation by ignoring it, right? "How?"
"By doing exactly what all the TV private eyes do. By puffing off a miracle, to deadline, by incredible dumb luck-and with absolute discretion. If you don't, I'm going to cancel the Joe Quigley Show in mid-season."
And there it was. Exactly the opportunity I'd spent my life getting ready for. A shot.
I could hardly believe it. Ever since I was a kid I'd been waiting to have some big shot threaten me with total ruin if I didn't solve a big hush-hush case fast. I wanted to kiss him. You've never seen anybody look so nonchalant.