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

"_Him?_ Ford?"
"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" Amy nodded. "But, yes, Lou's very brilliant. He graduated from high school when he was fifteen. He went through pre-med in three years. Then, in his first year of medical college, his father took very ill and Lou came home. Doctor Ford--his father, that is--didn't get any worse, but he didn't get any better either. He just lingered on, year after year. And Lou . . ."
Ford had felt that he had to stay with the old man. But there was nothing in the small town for him to do. No suitable work, no real challenge for his mind. Still, he had to do something, and because he was "old family" he had been given a deputy sheriff's appointment. It was no job for a book-learned dude, obviously. For a man with ambitions which would be interpreted as pretensions. You had to blend with those around you, with the public's conception of a cowtown deputy So Ford had blended. He had fitted himself into the role with a vengeance, exaggerating it until it bordered on caricature. And with this outward twisting of the man, there had been an inward one. In the brain-- the intelligence--which could not be used as it had been intended to be.
". . . very high-handed and arrogant," Amy was saying. "He won't explain himself. If you can't see things as clearly as he does, then it's your own fault. You'd better smartenup, as he'd put it. But he'll do a great deal for someone he really likes, and what he does is usually right."
Bugs gritted his teeth. It was all he could do to control himself. Finally, his voice merely sarcastic, he asked just what great plans Ford had in mind for her.
"Well," Amy said, thoughtful. "I believe he originally intended to make me leave town. To force me out into the world. Now, I think he's decided that I may belong here, so . . ." she broke off, blushing for some reason. "Why don't we change the subject, hmm? It's hard for me to understand Lou, and I know it must be a lot harder for you."
Bugs let the statement pass, but he did understand Ford-- to his own way of thinking. He had Ford figured right down to a tee. He hadn't reached his conclusions hastily. On the contrary, he'd been willing, even anxious, to believe that the deputy was okay. But Ford's own actions, one piled upon another, had made any such belief impossible.
He was convinced of Ford's unalloyed, unrelieved blackness, because Ford himself had so convinced him.
That was that. It was maddeningly aggravating that Amy couldn't see the truth about the man.
. . . It was about ten o'clock on the night of his return from Westex. Dozing uneasily, almost as much awake as asleep, Bugs heard a faint sound at his door.
He sat up, started to jump up. Then, he quietly lay down again. Listening. Watching with slitted eyes.
There was a _click_; a faint draft of air and flash of light, as the door opened and closed. Silence for a moment. An almost-silence. Then a rustling sound, a series of rustles, protracted over several seconds. And then stealthy footsteps.
They traversed the brief areaway past the bathroom. They stopped, right at his bedside.
Bugs couldn't actually see the intruder; only that there was one. Only a blurred shadow among the darker shadows of the room. But that was enough.
He moved suddenly, moving with that incredible swiftness of which very big men are sometimes capable. His arms swept out and swept shut. His body rose and came down again, pinning the intruder beneath him.
"Now, by God!" he grunted savagely "Just what the--"
The sentence ended in a startled gulp. He had reacted rather than acted, his movements rushing ahead of his thoughts. But now--.
The body squirmed delicately Making certain adjustments. Fitting him into its bared flesh, its soft, warm, gently undulant contours.
Then, there was a contented sigh. And a delicious shudder of anticipation. And a tense, almost desperate whisper:
"You're not angry, Mr. McKenna? Y-You think less of mme, Mr. McKenna? I've wanted to so long, and . . ."
"Rosie," said Bugs.
And that was all he said. That either of them said. For quite a while.

14
He had gotten to bed about five after his return from Westex. Very tired, but with too much on his mind for sleep. With a riddle which had to be solved, yet was seemingly unsolvable. For Rosalie Vara was out of the blackmail picture now--and he was very glad of it. But if she was out, then who was in?
In actuality, she had been his only suspect. There had been two possibles--she and Joyce Hanlon--but Joyce had been in her suite at the time of Dudley's death. So it had to be Rosalie. It had had to be something that wasn't and couldn't be. She was in the clear and Joyce was in the clear. The only two women who, by any stretch of the imagination, could have been in Dudley's room, or, rather, his bath room.
The only two women . . .
Well, couldn't it possibly have been a man? It _could_ have been, couldn't it? After all, there was someone and if it wasn't a woman, then it had to be a man. That makes sense, doesn't it, McKenna?
Bugs supposed that it did. But he also knew no man was involved in the matter.
Dudley had been staging a little party there in his bathroom. A sex party And in the intimacy of their secret carousing, his guest had slipped him a mickey.
He wouldn't have had a man in his bath. What would have been the point in that? Why would a man want to keep secret the presence of another man?
Then there was that mickey--the choloral hydrate. As Ford had pointed out, it was traditionally a woman's weapon. A man might clout you or mug you, or stick a gun in your ribs. A woman did the job with chloral. She couldn't muscle you, so she honeyed up to you. She got your guard down, got you to thinking about things that weren't discussed in Sunday school. Got you to the point where you weren't thinking at all--just wanting--and then she gave you a drink. And right after that the party suddenly ended. You were in the land of bye-bye. And if you'd gotten a big enough dose, you might not ever emerge from it.
So it had to be a woman, which meant that it couldn't be a man. But since it couldn't be a woman either--despite its having to be, why--well, where were you for God's sake?
Bugs was acquiring a violent headache. Also, at long last, he was beginning to get drowsy.
Now, who. . . what. . . he thought. Not a man or a woman. Not a man. . . or a woman. Not someone you'd think of as being . . .
He almost had it. The only logical answer. He thought the seeming paradox through, was on the verge of the exceedingly simple explanation. And, then, at that very moment, he'd fallen asleep.
And when he awakened he had other things to think about.
. . . She came back from the bathroom, bringing him a drink from the ice-water tap. She sat down on the edge of the bed, a little shy now, timid, and pulled a corner of the sheet over her naked thighs. Bugs had been about to make a suggestion: that she should address him less formally in view of what had transpired between them. Now, he decided that he wouldn't. She was a funny kid. Apparently she was more comfortable mister-ing him, yet she might take his suggestion as an order.
Out in the oil fields somewhere, there was a sudden mass of light. Not a flash but a mass, racing and spreading through the darkness, so brilliant and far-extended that some of its glare came down into the court of the Hanlon, and filtered around the drapes at Bugs's windows. There was the light; then, since sound, of course, travels much more slowly than light, a thunderous explosion. It came from at least a mile away Bugs estimated, but the blast rattled the Hanlon's windows.
Rosalie shivered and gripped Bugs's hand. He squeezed it reassuringly. "A big one, huh? Must have been a battery of boilers going up."
"Oh, how terrible! Do you suppose anyone was hurt?"
"Naw, sure not," he lied, touched by her concern. "Look Rosie, I--Is it okay for you to come on duty so early? It won't get you in trouble?"
It wasn't the question he'd started to ask. He'd checked himself out of regard for her. Because in telling him what he really wanted to know--as she probably would have out of loyalty and affection--she _could_ get into trouble.
"No" --she shook her head to the query. "As long as I put in a full shift, and get my work done, I can come early or late. Within reason, of course."
"Uh-huh. Well, that's good," he said.
Drifting in on the night breeze now was a wailing, eerie chorus of sirens. Ambulances were speeding out from the emergency hospitals--as numerous in the oil fields as drinkstands at a carnival--to the scene of the disaster. The sound dwindled and was lost in the distance. Rosalie freed the hand that Bugs was holding and got up.
She had left her clothes in the areaway. Bringing them back to the bed, she sat down again and began to dress. Bugs made a movement to help her. Shyly, she drew away a little.
"I want to tell you something, Mr. McKenna. Two things. First--I won't do anything like this again. I'm glad it happened. I wanted to--wanted you to have me. You stood up for me against Mr. Ford, and I can't tell you how grateful I am. And--"
"I don't want you to be, Rosie. I don't want you to feel that you owe me anything."
"I know. You wouldn't want me to." Her soft voice trembled with emotion. "But, anyway. What I started to say Mr. McKenna, was that--that--"