"Thompson, Jim - Wild Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

"All right, then. Open 'nother bottle, and be quick about it!"
They obeyed. They continued to. In their feudal minds, the fact that a liege-lord had lost his sanity did not lose him the right to reign. He was still the boss. He was authority. He was a symbol of something which, far more than the socially enlightened, the Ted and Ed Gusicks find necessary to existence.
During the day, they took turns about waiting on him. Before departing for work at night, they set out whiskey food, and cigarettes, everything he might need or want, or think he needed or wanted. And never again did they mention the hotel in his presence. He had told them not to. Moreover, in his increasingly sodden state, it had become impossible to talk to him.
One night, or, rather, very early one morning, Westbrook awakened with a feeling of having been reborn. His head was entirely clear. There was none of the hideous shaking, the gut-wracking nausea, which normally accompanied his awakenings.
Actually, he was in a state of euphoria. Nature was giving him one last unhampered whirl at life before closing in for the kill. But the sense of optimism and well-being seemed entirely valid, and while it lasted he dumped every bottle of his liquor into the toilet.
He had scarcely done so when he was plunged back into the abyss: to a far deeper depth than he had previously penetrated. A convulsion wracked him, doubled him with terror and pain. Invisible hands gripped his head, squeezing tighter and tighter and still tighter, until his brain squirmed and screamed in agony.
He looked around wildly. He saw the empty bottles on the floor, and had no memory of how they had got there.
Ted and Ed, he thought. It was they who had done this to him. They'd been after him to stop drinking, and now--.
"Kill 'em," he mumbled fiercly. "Kill 'em, kill 'em, kill 'em. I--I got to have something. I--I GOT TO HAVE--"
Staggering into the kitchen, he pawed frantically through the cupboards. He went from room to room, jerking out drawers, knocking over furniture, upturning cushions and mattresses. In the bathroom medicine cabinet, he found a pint bottle of rubbing alcohol. He clutched it to his breast and staggered back into the kitchen.
He set a small pan on the work shelf. He held a stack of bread over it, started to filter the alcohol through the bread. And his hand jerked convulsively crashing the bottle against the wall.
He screamed, sobbed, over the terrible loss. For a moment he was too dispirited and hopeless to go on. Then he jerked open the refrigerator, and began jerking out its contents.
There was nothing in it. Nothing, Westbrook thought angrily but crap: food. The bastards! Oh, those fiendish, sneaky bastards! They'd loaded their refrigerator with eggs and butter and milk and cream, and steaks and roasts and--dozens of worthless items. And not a lousy wonderful drop to drink.
"Kill 'em," Westbrook babbled. "Kill 'em. If it's the last thing I ever do. I'll--I'll--"
Back in the rear of the refrigerator, concealed until now by a bag of grapefruit, was a bottle. A jug-like, gift-type carafe filled with a chocolatey liquid. It would be syrup, of course. They had guessed that he would be dying, by now, and had planned this ultimate and unbearable disappointment to shove him over the brink.
Westbrook thrust his head inside the refrigerator, scraping his ears in the process. Squinting, the print wavering and blurring before his eyes, he read the label on the bottle.
_Creme de Cacao!_ A full fifth--minus a sip or so--of seventyproof liqueur!
Westbrook let out a low moan. He started to grab for it; then, remembering the horrible accident with the alcohol, he held a pan against the shelf, and raked the bottle into it. He put the pan on the floor. He tilted the bottle on its side, and pulled the cork.
There was a gentle gurgle, a rich brown flow. Whimpering, Westbrook reached for a teacup. He wasn't risking the loss of a drop of this. _They_ might fool him once, by God, but they couldn't do it twice. He'd get it all out into the pan, and --
The flow stopped. Something inside the bottle had lodged in its neck. Westbrook moaned piteously. Somehow, he managed to nip the obstruction between a trembling thumb and forefinger, and yanked it out.
The wonderful gurgling resumed. Westbrook tilted the bottle, cautiously assisting the flow. Finally, his patience exhausted, he snatched it up, shook out the few remaining drops and hurled it into the corner.
And then, at last, he drank.
He drank two full cups, one after the other. Cheeks puffed, eyes bulging, he shuddered violently He sighed and leaned back against the refrigerator, breathing in long, deep, grateful breaths.
He got a cigarette lighted. Picking up the pan--and he could trust his hands now--he started to fill his cup again.
Something plopped into it. The object that had stopped up the neck of the bottle. Gingerly, he got it between two fingers, examined it, frowning.
It wasn't a cork, as he had thought. It was a small balloon, stuffed tightly with something, and its end closed with a rubber band.
A premonitious shiver ran through Westbrook. He wiped the thing off with his handkerchief, wiped his fingers clean, and ripped open the balloon.
The "stuffing" fell to the floor. It consisted of currency, a tightly rolled wad of five-hundred-dollar bills. He counted them, and a low yowl of mingled triumph and outrage spewed through his teeth.
Outrage, yes. For while he didn't know how they'd latched onto this dough, he knew damned well where it had come from. Dudley had been short five grand and here was five grand. And if they hadn't stolen it from him--the self same sum that he had pinched--who had they stolen it from? And if it wasn't stolen--laughable thought!--if it wasn't too hot to handle, why had they hidden it so carefully?
The questions were nonsensically elementary; their answers axiomatic to a man of Westbrook's background. He thought of the terror and hopelessness he had lived in because of the theft, and his lips parted in another yowl.
"Now, I _am_ going to do it," he vowed grimly. "Now, I _will_ kill them!"
There was a supply of clean shirts, underclothing and the like in his bedroom; and his suit, unworn since he had moved in here, was also cleaned and pressed. He bathed and shaved, dressed himself meticulously. He made and drank a pot of coffee, casually kicking the creme de cacao pan out of his way
Alcohol. Why had he ever wanted the stuff? What could it give him that he didn't have, or could easily get? Well, no matter. He didn't want it now, and he had a strange conviction that he would never want it again.
He finished the coffee. Then he began prowling through the apartment; looking in closets and on shelves. Studying various maneuverable objects.
He took his time about it, and at last he found exactly what he was looking for: a heavy wooden rod, some three inches in circumference and approximately four feet long.
It was installed in a closet where it served as a clothes hanger rack. Ripping it out, he took a few practice swings with it, and grimly satisfied, returned to the living room.
This would do the trick, he thought. He wouldn't quite kill those bastards, but he'd make them think they'd been killed. He'd--.
"God!" he said suddenly, "God!"--he flung the pole from him. "What's the matter with me? What's been the matter with me?"
And when the Gusicks arrived from work, he only talked to them.
There was nothing funny about theft, he said. It was not amusing or shrewd or sharp, ever to inflict pain or loss upon another. And it was the job of everyone--not just the individual affected--to see that no one suffered preventable pain or loss. You had to do it. Otherwise you had no peace; you had constantly to keep your guard up. And when you wearied, as you inevitably must, you got it in the neck yourself.
He liked them, he went on. In many ways he was deeply indebted to them. They were sharp and on their toes--and he liked that. But if they were to work under him again, they had better be sharp in the right way. And he hoped he'd made it clear what the right way was.
That was what he said, in substance. Having said it, and clutching the money tightly in his pocket, he returned to the hotel.
But this, as has been indicated, was days after Dudley's death.
And the fate of Bugs McKenna--and various other parties--had already been settled.

13
There was nothing incriminating in Rosalie Vara's purse, and nothing on her personally He had searched her briefly but efficiently--and God, how he hated himself for it now!--and all he had found in her clothes was Rosalie.
She had gone to the post office for an entirely innocent reason, and the evidence was in his hands. He went on staring at it, the postcard he had found in her purse; feeling stupider and stupider, feeling his face grow redder and redder. He didn't know what to say to her. He was afraid to look at her. So he kept his eyes on the card:
Dear Rose:
Sure was glad and surprised to get your telephone call today, and sure wish I could see you. But like I told you, I had to check with my boss, and he says he is going to need me straight on through until six o'clock. So unless you're going to be in town that late, I guess we can't get together. Sure sorry Rose. Let me know a little more ahead of time when you're coming over again. Love, Ella Mae.