"Thompson, Jim - Nothing Man, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

The two Teletype machines began to click and clatter-- first the A.P.'s, then the U.P.'s. I strolled over and took a look at them.
Pacific City, in the words of our publisher, is a "city of homes, churches, and people"--which translated from its chamber-of-commerce _lingua franca_ means that it is a small city, a nonindustrial city, and a city where little goes on, ordinarily, of much interest to the outside world. The _Courier_ is the only newspaper. The wire services do not maintain corespondents here but are covered, when coverage is necessary, by our staffers.
I ripped the yellow flimsies from the Teletypes and read:
LOS ANG 60 1PM SPL AP TO COURIER
PACITY CHF DET LEM STUKEY REPTD MISSING
OVER TWENTYFOUR HOURS. TRUE? UNUSUAL?
POSSIBLE CONNECTION SNEERING SLAYER CASE?
LET'S HEAR FROM YOU COURIER. THATCHER AP LA
LA CAL 603 PM UP TO COUR
RADIO REPTS DETEC CHF LEM STUKEY MISSING.
HOW ABOUT THIS COURIER? WHY NOT
MENTIONED ANY YOUR EDITIONS? UNIMPORTANT?
OFTEN MISSING? ANSWER DALE (SIG) LOS ANG UP.
I tossed the flimsies into a wastebasket and strolled over to a window. . . . True? Yes, the report was true enough. Pacific City's Chief of Detectives Lem Stukey had been missing for more than a day. . . . Unusual? We-eli, hardly. The police department wasn't alarmed about it. They hadn't been able to locate him in any of the blind pigs or whorehouses where he usually holed up, but he could have found a new place. Or, perhaps, someone had found a place for him. . . .
Anyway, the wire services couldn't expect us to follow up on a query at this hour. We were an afternoon paper. Our "noon" edition hit the streets at ten in the morning, our "home" at noon, and our "late final"--a re-plate job--at three in the afternoon. That was more than three hours ago, so to hell with A.P. and U.P. To hell with them, anyway.
I stared out the window--out and down to the street, ten stories below. And I was sad, more than sad, even bitter. And all over nothing, nothing at all, really. Merely the fact that the last line of this story will have to be written by someone else.
I turned from the window and marched back to my desk. I successfully matched myself for two drinks and received another on the house.
I looked back through what I had written. Then, I lowered my hands to the keys and began to type:
_The day I met Deborah Chasen was the same day I got the letter from the Veterans' Administration. It was around nine of a morning a couple of months ago, and Dave Randall_. . . .

2
Dave had, on that morning, brought it over to my desk. He stood lingering a moment afterward, trying to look friendly and interested. He mumbled something about "Good news, I hope," and I opened the letter.
It was, as I've said, from the Veterans' Administration. It announced that my disability compensation was being increased to approximately eighty dollars a month.
I shoved back my chair. I stood up, clicked my heels together, and gave Dave a snappy salute.
"Official communication, sir! Sergeant Brown respectfully requests the colonel's instructions!"
"Carry on." He looked nervously around the office, that sickly smile on his face. "Brownie, I wish--"
"Thank you, Colonel. The hour for the morning patrol approaches. Do I have the colonel's permission to--?"
"Do any goddamned thing you want to," he said, and he strode back to his desk.
I sat down again. I winked at Tom Judge, who worked the rewrite desk opposite me. I gave him a smile, a very cheery smile considering that I hadn't had a drink since breakfast.
Tom didn't smile back. "Why do you keep riding him?" He scowled. "Why make things tough on a good guy?"
"Why, Tom," I said. "You mean you and the colonel are--like _that?_"
"I mean I like him. I mean if I were in his place I'd straighten you out or kick your ass out of here. Boy"--he shook his head disgustedly--"talk about justice! Where the hell do you get off drawing a pension anyway?"
"It is puzzling," I said, "isn't it? Obviously I am not disabled for employment. Obviously I have suffered no disfigurement. I am even more handsome than on the day I was born, and my mother boasted--with considerable veracity, I believe--that I was the prettiest baby in town."
His eyes narrowed. "I get it. You're a fairy, huh?"
"Is that an assertion," I said, "or merely a surmise?"
"Don't think I'm afraid of you, Brown!"
"Aren't you?" I said. "Then perhaps you'd like to do something about my statement, made herewith, that you are a nosy, dull-witted son-of-a-bitch and a goddamned lousy newspaperman."
His face went white and he made motions at getting up from his chair. I got up and walked into the john.
A moment later he followed me in.
I could see that he was still sore, but he was trying to cover up. He would wait for a better time to pay me off.
"Look, Brown. I didn't mean t-to--"
"And I," I said, "apologize for calling you a son-of-abitch."
"About the pension, Brownie. Not that it's any of my business but--well, I guess it must have something to do with your nerves, huh?"
"That's it," I nodded soberly. "That's it exactly, Tom. A considerable portion of the nerves--kind of a nerve center--was completely destroyed."
I watched him carefully, afraid for a moment that I might have said too much, wondering what he would do-- and what I would do--if the truth did dawn on him. Because there is something hideously funny about a thing of that kind. People laugh about it, privately perhaps, but they laugh. They give you sympathetic smiles and glances, their faces tight with laughter restrained. And even when they do not laugh you can hear them. . . _Poor guy! What a hell of a--ha, ha, ha--I wonder what he does when he has to... ?_
You can't work. You can't live. You can't die. You are afraid to die, afraid of the complete defenselessness to laughter that death will bring.
But I needn't have worried about Tom Judge. He lacked the inquiring mind, the ability to follow up on a lead. He was, to mention a statement I had not retracted, a goddamned lousy newspaperman.
"Gosh, I'm sorry, Brownie. I guess that would make you pretty edgy. I still think you're pretty tough on Dave, but--"
I told him I didn't mean anything by it. "Not only is he my friend," I said, "but I respect him professionally. I wouldn't want to embarrass him by repeating the compliment, but Dave strikes me as typifying the genus _Courier_. Clear-eyed, clear-thinking, his feet firmly on the ground and his head--"
Tom laughed halfheartedly. "Okay," he said, "you win."