"Thompson, Jim - Grifters, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

"Sure, we can take out this bedroom furniture. Move back the parlor stuff in no time at all--desk, lounge, easy chairs, anything you want within reason. Some of the finest furniture you ever saw."
Dillon said he would like to take a look at it, and Simms conducted him to the basement storeroom. It was by no means the finest he had ever seen, of course, but it was decent and comfortable; and he neither expected nor wanted anything truly fine. He had a certain image to maintain. A portrait of a young man who made rather a good living--just good, no better--and lived well within it.
He inquired the rental on the suite. Simms approached the issue circuitously, pointing out the twin necessities of maintaining a high-class clientele, for he would settle for nothing less, by God, and also making a profit, which was goddamn hard for a Godfearing man to do in these times.
"Why, some of these peasants we get in here, I mean that _try_ to get in here, they'll fight you for a burned-out light globe. You just can't please 'em, know what I mean? It's like crackerjacks, you know, the more they get the more they want. But that's the way the cinnamon rolls, I guess, and like we used to say down in Witchita Falls, if you can't stand posts you better not dig holes. Uh, one hundred and twentyfive a month, Mr. Dillon?"
"That sounds reasonable," Roy smiled. "I'll take it."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Dillon. I'd like to shave it a little for you; I ain't saying I _wouldn't_ shave it for the right kind of tenant. If you'd guarantee, now to stay a minimum of three months, why--"
"Mr. Simms," said Roy.
"--why, I could make you a special rate. I'll lean over backward to--"
"Mr. Simms," Dillon said firmly. "I'll take the place on a year's lease. First and last month's rent in advance. And one hundred and twenty-five a month will be fine."
"It--it will?" The proprietor was incredulous. "You'll lease for a year at a hundred and twenty-five, and--and--"
"I will. I don't believe in moving around a lot. I make a profit in my business, and I expect others to make one in theirs."
Simms gurgled. He gasped. His paunch wriggled in his pants, and his entire face, including the area which extended back into his balding head, reddened with pleasure. He was a shrewd and practiced student of human nature, he declared. He knew peasants when he saw them, and he knew gentlemen; he'd immediately spotted Roy Dillon as one of the latter.
"And you're smart," he nodded wisely. "You know it just ain't good business to chisel where you live. What the hell? What's the percentage in chiselling a hotel for a few bucks--people you're going to see every day--if it's going to make 'em a little down on you?"
"You're absolutely right," Dillon said warmly.
Simms said he was damned tootin' he was right. Suppose, for example, that there was an inquiry about a guest of the peasant type. What could you honestly say about him anyway, beyond saying that he did live there and it was your Christian practice to say nothing about a man unless you could say something good? But if a _gentleman_ was the subject of the inquiry, well, then, honesty compelled you to say so. He didn't simply _room_ at the hotel, he _lived_ there, a man of obvious character and substance who leased by the year and . . .
Dillon nodded and smiled, letting him ramble on. The Grosvenor-Carlton was the sixth hotel he'd visited since his arrival from Chicago. All had offered quarters which were equal to and as cheap or cheaper than those he had taken here. For there is a chronic glut of rooms in Los Angeles's smaller hotels. But he had found vaguely indefinable objections to all of them. They didn't _look_ quite right. They didn't _feel_ quite right. Only the Grosvenor-Carlton and Simms had had the right feel and look.
"... one more thing," Simms was saying now. "This is your home, see? Renting like you do, it's just the same as if you were in an apartment or house. It's your castle, like the law says, and if you should want to have a guest, you know, a lady guest, why you got a perfect right to."
"Thank you for telling me," Roy nodded gravely. "I don't have anyone in mind at the moment, but I usually make friends wherever I go."
"0' course. A fine-looking young fellow like you is bound to have lady friends, and I bet they got class too. None of these roundheels that crumb a place up just by walking through the lobby."
"Never," Dillon assured him. "I'm very careful of the friends I make, Mr. Simms. Particularly the lady friends."
He was careful. During his four-year tenancy at the hotel he had had only one female visitor, a divorcee in her thirties, and everything about her--looks, dress, and manners--was abundantly satisfactory even to the discriminating Mr. Simms. The only fault he could find with her was that she did not come often enough. For Moira Langtry was also discriminating. Given her own way, something that Dillon frequently refrained from giving her as a matter of policy, she wouldn't have come within a mile of the GrosvenorCarlton. After all, she had a very nice apartment of her own, a place with one bedroom, two baths and a wet bar. If he really wanted to see her--and she was beginning to doubt that he did--why couldn't he come out there?
"Well, why can't you?" she said, as he sat up in bed phoning to her. "It's no further for you than it is for me."
"But you're so much younger, dear. A youthful female like you can afford to humor a doddering old man."
"Flattery will get you nowhere, mister"--she was pleased. "I'm five years older, and I feel every minute of it."
Dillon grinned. _Five_ years older? Hell, she was ten if she was a day. "The fact is, I'm a little under the weather," he explained. "No, no, it's nothing contagious. I happened to trip over a chair the other night in the dark, and it gave me a nasty whack in the stomach."
"Well ... I guess I could come . . ."
"That's my girl. I'd hold my breath if I wasn't panting."
"Mmm? Let's hear you."
"Pant, pant," he said.
"You poor thing," she said. "Moira'll hurry just as fast as she can."
Apparently, she had been dressed to go out when he called, for she arrived in less than an hour. Or, perhaps, it only seemed that way. He had got up to unlock the door preparatory to her arrival, and returning to bed he had felt strangely tired and faint. So he had let his eyes drift shut, and when he opened them, a very little later seemingly, she was entering the room. Sweeping into it on her tiny, spike-heeled shoes; a billowing but compact bundle of woman with glossily black hair, and direct darkly-burning eyes.
She paused just inside the threshold for a moment, self-assured but suppliant. Posing like one of those arrogantly inviting mannequins. Then, she reached behind her, feeling for and finding the doorkey. And turning it with a soft click.
Roy forgot to wonder about her age.
She was old enough, was Moira Langtry.
She was young enough.
His silent approval spoke to her, and she gave a little twitch to her body, letting the ermine stole hang from one shoulder. Then, hips swaying delicately, she came slowly across the room; small chin outthrust; seemingly tugged forward by the bountiful imbalance within the small white blouse.
She stopped with her knees pressed against his bed, and looking upward he could see nothing but the tip of her nose above the contours of her breasts.
Raising a finger, he poked her in one then the other.
"You're hiding," he said. "Come out, come out, wherever you are."
She sank gracefully to her knees, let her dark eyes burn into his face.
"You stink," she said, tonelessly, the blouse shimmering with her words. "I hate you."
"The twins seem to be restless," he said. "Maybe we should put them to bed."
"You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to smother you."
He said, "Death, where is thy sting?" and then he was necessarily voiceless for a while. After an incredibly soft, sweet-smelling eternity, he was allowed to come up for air. And he spoke to her in a whisper.
"You smell good, Moira. Like a bitch in a hothouse."
"Darling. What a beautiful thing to say!"
"Maybe you don't smell good . . ."
"I do, too. You just said so."
"It could be your clothes."
"It's me! Want me to prove it to you?"