"Thompson, Jim - Killer Inside Me, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

"I know it's crazy, Amy. But--"
She laughed. She rolled her head on the pillow, laughing. "Oh, Lou! I never heard of such a thing! You're twenty-nine years old, and y-you don't even speak good English, and--and--oh, ha, ha, ha . . ."
She laughed until she was gasping, and my cigarette burned down between my fingers and I never knew it until I smelled the scorching flesh.
"I'm s-sorry, darling. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but--Were you teasing me? Were you joking with your little Amy?"
"You know me," I said. "Lou the laughing boy."
She began to quiet down at the tone of my voice. She turned away from me and lay on her back, picking at the quilt with her fingers. I got up and found a cigar, and sat down on the bed again.
"You don't want to marry me, do you, Lou?"
"I don't think we should marry now, no."
"You don't want to marry me at all."
"I didn't say that."
She was silent for several minutes, but her face talked for her. I saw her eyes narrow and a mean little smile twist her lips, and I knew what she was thinking. I knew almost to a word what she was going to say.
"I'm afraid you'll have to marry me, Lou. You'll have to, do you understand?"
"No," I said. "I won't have to. You're not pregnant, Amy. You've never gone with anyone else, and you're not pregnant by me."
"I'm lying, I suppose?"
"Seems as though," I said. "I couldn't get you pregnant if I wanted to. I'm sterile."
"_You?_"
"Sterile isn't the same thing as impotent. I've had a vasectomy."
"Then why have we always been so--why do you use--?"
I shrugged. "It saved a lot of explanations. Anyway, you're not pregnant, to get back to the subject."
"I just don't understand," she said, frowning. She wasn't at all bothered by my catching her in a lie. "Your father did it? Why, Lou?"
"Oh, I was kind of run down and nervous, and he thought--"
"Why, you were not! You were never that way!"
"Well," I said, "he thought I was."
"He _thought!_ He did a terrible thing like that--made you so we can never have children--just because he thought something! Why, it's terrible! It makes me sick! . . . When was it, Lou?"
"What's the difference?" I said. "I don't really remember. A long time ago."
I wished I'd kept my mouth shut about her not being pregnant. Now I couldn't back up on my story. She'd know I was lying and she'd be more suspicious than ever.
I grinned at her and walked my fingers up the curving plane of her belly. I squeezed one of her breasts, and then I moved my hand up until it was resting against her throat.
"What's the matter?" I said. "What have you got that pretty little face all puckered up for?"
She didn't say anything. She didn't smile back. She just lay there, staring, adding me up point by point, and she began to look more puzzled in one way and less in another. The answer was trying to crash through and it couldn't make it--quite. I was standing in the way. It couldn't get around the image she had of gentle, friendly easy-going Lou Ford.
"I think," she said slowly, "I'd better go home now."
"Maybe you'd better," I agreed. "It'll be dawn before long."
"Will I see you tomorrow? Today, I mean."
"Well, Saturday's a pretty busy day for me," I said. "I reckon we might go to church together Sunday or maybe have dinner together, but--"
"But you're busy Sunday night."
"I really am, honey. I promised to do a favor for a fellow, and I don't see how I can get out of it."
"I see. It never occurs to you to think about me when you're making all your plans, does it? Oh, no! I don't matter."
"I won't be tied up too long Sunday," I said. "Maybe until eleven o'clock or so. Why don't you come over and wait for me like you did tonight? I'd be tickled to death to have you."
Her eyes flickered, but she didn't break out with a lecture like she must have wanted to. She motioned for me to move so she could get up; and then she got up and began dressing.
"I'm awfully sorry, honey," I said.
"Are you?" She pulled her dress over her head, patted it down around her hips and buttoned the collar. Standing first on one foot then the other, she put on her pumps. I got up and held her coat for her, smoothing it around her shoulders as I helped her into it.
She turned inside my arms and faced me. "All right, Lou," she said briskly. "We'll say no more tonight. But Sunday we'll have a good long talk. You're going to tell me why you've acted as you have these last few months, and no lying or evasions. Understand?"
"Ma'am, Miss Stanton," I said. "Yes, ma'am."
"All right," she nodded, "that's settled. Now you'd better put some clothes on or go back to bed before you catch cold."

5
That day, Saturday, was a busy one. There were a lot of payday drunks in town, it being the middle of the month, and drunks out here mean fights. All of us deputies and the two constables and Sheriff Maples had our hands full keeping things under control.
I don't have much trouble with drunks. Dad taught me they were touchy as all hell and twice as jumpy, and if you didn't ruffle 'em or alarm 'em they were the easiest people in the world to get along with. You should never bawl a drunk out, he said, because the guy had already bawled himself out to the breaking point. And you should never pull a gun or swing on a drunk because he was apt to feel that his life was in danger and act accordingly.
So I just moved around, friendly and gentle, taking the guys home wherever I could instead of to jail, and none of them got hurt and neither did I. But it all took time. From the time I went on at noon until eleven o'clock, I didn't so much as stop for a cup of coffee. Then around midnight, when I was already way over shift, I got one of the special jobs Sheriff Maples was always calling me in on.
A Mexican pipeliner had got all hayed up on marijuana and stabbed another Mexican to death. The boys had roughed him up pretty badly bringing him in and now, what with the hay and all, he was a regular wild man. They'd managed to get him off into one of the "quiet" cells, but the way he was cutting up he was going to take it apart or die in the attempt.
"Can't handle the crazy Mex the way we ought to," Sheriff Bob grumbled. "Not in a murder case. I miss my guess, we've already given some shyster defense lawyer enough to go yellin' third-degree."