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

"I--I--I'm sorry, sir," the clerk stammered. "I m-mean--"
"Been getting a lot of kicks on you. Not answering your phones. Chasing all over the house instead of staying where you belong. I know, I know"--Westbrook made a chopping motion with his hand. "You have a little auditing to do. Have to check up on the coffee-shop and the valet and so on. But that's no reason to be gone from the desk for thirty or forty minutes at a time."
"I'm not!--I mean," Eaton corrected himself, "I'm not aware that I have been absent for more than a few minutes," He was a rosy-cheeked young man addicted to college-cut clothes.
Westbrook looked at him distastefully, advised him that he was aware of it _now_, and turned back to the captain. "Well," he demanded, "where's the night bellboy? What's that day man doing on the elevator?"
"We're both working over," the captain shrugged sullenly. "Night boys haven't shown up yet."
"Why not?"
"Don't know. Look, Mr. Westbrook," the captain protested, "what are you jumping on me for? Those birds aren't on my shift."
"And aren't you tickled to death that they aren't!" Westbrook jeered. "Got you buffaloed, haven't they? Bet they're in the locker-room right now, and you haven't got the guts to run 'em up!"
The arrival of a guest ended his harangue. The captain scurried away, gratefully, to take the man's baggage. Westbrook left the lobby and started down the back stairs. The door to the bellboy's locker-room was partially open. Pausing in the dimly lit corridor, Westbrook looked through the aperture.
Like many "boys" in the hotel world, Ted and Ed Gusick, respectively the night bellboy and elevator operator, were boys in name only. Ted was about forty, Ed perhaps a year or so older. They had prematurely graying hair, and pinkish massaged-looking faces. They were well-built but slender; narrow-waisted, flat-stomached: wiry and strong. Born of the same mother, they may or may not have had the same father. Even she was unable to say. Amoral, vicious, treacherous and dishonest, they bore the hard polish of men who have spent a lifetime squeezing out of tight places.
They were fighting, standing almost toe to toe while they slugged each other. A veteran of a thousand such lockerroom brawls, Westbrook watched them with a feeling of nostalgia. Every blow was intended to cripple. Anything went, except hitting the other man in the face. Boys didn't fight that way anymore, Westbrook was thinking. They didn't fight period. They came whining to the management with their disputes: always, as in every difficulty, they wanted someone to do something for them. They were incompetent, indifferent, completely lacking in pride in their work--"too good" to do the job they were paid to do.
Well . . .
Westbrook sighed, shook his head and pulled himself back from the happy past. Then, setting his face in a ferocious scowl, he dashed into the locker-room, managing, by a miracle of foot-work, to give both boys a solid kick before they could elude him.
"Up!" he roared, pointing dramatically to the ceiling. "Up on the g'damn floor! What's the matter with you, anyway? You know what time it is? What d'you mean keeping a watch waiting?"
"Sorry, sir" said Ed.
"Sorry, Mr. Westbrook," said Ted.
And they edged warily toward the door. Westbrook advanced on them, one hard little fist drawn back.
"What were you fighting about, huh? Hah? Answer me, you friggers, or I'll--"
Ted said they had been fighting about nothing. Ed said they had no excuse. These replies were exactly the right ones, in Westbrook's opinion. In the old days, boys often fought out of sheer high spirits, and they made no excuses if caught. Nevertheless, as a matter of discipline--and because they expected it--he took a vicious swing at the brothers, cursing them roundly as they fled out the door and up the stairs.
Now, those were real boys, he thought, as he left the locker-room. You'd never catch boys like that whining or complaining. They knew how to wait on a guest, to get their own way with a man and do itso ingratiatingly that he was glad to pay for the privilege. In the last twenty years, they had worked with Westbrook in perhaps a dozen different hotels. Shrewd and suave, knowing hotels from subbasement to roof garden, they could probably have managed one as well as he. But they remained bellboys by choice. They were good at hopping bells, and it left them free of onerous responsibilities. Also--unless Westbrook missed his guess--they made more money than he did.
Ordinarily, neither of the brothers would have accepted employment as an elevator operator. One of them had done so in this case because only the night bellboy's job was open and they insisted on working together. At the time he had hired them, Westbrook had promised to give them day jobs on bells as soon as they became available. But they had later advised him not to bother, that they were completely satisfied with things as they were.
Westbrook correctly suspected that their preference for the night shift was largely due to the scanty supervision thereon. Certainly they would be able to run circles around that goofy clerk, Leslie Eaton. But no one had caught them in any forbidden activities as yet, and until someone did catch them, or at least came forth with a valid complaint . . .
Well, that was that, Westbrook shrugged. They were good boys.
The dopey dullness of sobriety was creeping back over him. He was passing out on his feet, and there was still that all-important matter of Dudley to settle.
Westbrook hurried out the back door, fighting to keep the telltale smirk from his face. When he returned, some twenty minutes later, he was once again brisk and alert. And there were two half-pints of whiskey in his pockets, and another half in his stomach.
He entered the unattended service elevator and switched on the light. He shot upward, the control pushed all the way over, arriving seconds later at the twelfth floor. It was a perfect stop, with the car exactly level with the landing. Westbrook rewarded himself with a couple of "short ones"--adding another half-pint of whiskey to his interior content.
He tossed the empty bottle into the incinerator chute. Turning away from it, he suddenly staggered wildly and flailed the air with his arms. The fit was gone almost as soon as it came: he had moved in an insane blur for a moment, and then it was all over. But Westbrook knew that it signaled the crossing of an invisible line. From now on the booze would be working against him, sweeping him finally into the dark and disastrous void which he had penetrated so often in the past.
Westbrook shivered slightly, remembering those occasions. He remembered the agony that had followed them, the terrible sickness and the equally terrible shame and embarrassment. He couldn't go through it again. _God, he couldn't do it!_ He could not, must not, take another drink tonight!
Except, of course, one very small one. Just enough to see him through this Dudley matter.
He took it. He re-corked the bottle, then slowly uncorked it and took another one. Seemingly, there were no ill effects.
He did feel a rising anger, but that was natural enough. Goddammit, how long could a man go on catching the dirty end of the stick without getting fed up? He never got any rest. He never had a minute to call his own. Work, by God, that was all he ever got. Work and more work, and then still more work. And what did he have to work with, hah? A bunch of bumbling, bastardly lunatics! And was it appreciated, hah? Did he ever get a goddamned word of thanks, hah?
Shit, no!
Westbrook snapped suddenly out of his self-pitying reverie, wondering if he had spoken aloud. He decided (1) that he hadn't, (2) that he didn't give a damn if he had, and (3) that he wasn't the kind of a man who went around talking to himself. The first decision was entirely correct, the last almost. He became hatefully insulting and murderously angry when his alcoholic tolerance was exceeded. But he had to be literally saturated before he appeared drunk, in the usual sense. The fact was at once his curse and his blessing.
He drank the remainder of his whiskey. Then, with his shoulders hunched pugiistically, his eyes squinted to pinpoints, and his face flushed with righteous indignation, he stamped down the corridor. He was in a wing of the building, one of its two wings. Bugs McKenna's room was a few steps away, facing the court as did the rooms of all employees who slept in.
Westbrook strode up to the door. He drew his fist back, hesitated--held it poised for a matter of seconds--and then he pounded.

4
Bugs had been awakened by the ringing of the telephone. It was his usual eleven p.m. wake-up call, and he and the operator exchanged the usual amenities. With that out of the way, she advised him that yes, he had had one call.
"Mrs. Hanlon. She said you could give her a ring whenever you waked up."
"Oh," Bugs said. "Well, thanks."
"Yes, sir. Shall I get her for you now, sir?"
Bugs didn't like the tone of her voice, the subtle note of amusement. So he said, "No. I'll tell you when I want you to call her," and slammed up the receiver.
He took a shower. Toweling his big body, he decided that he was jumping at shadows again, acting like a touchy kid instead of a man. He was wrong about the telephone operator. Or, if he wasn't--if she was a little tickled about Mrs. Hanlon's almost nightly calls--what of it? It was nothing to get sore about. He should have let her have her little joke and pretended not to notice.
"Got to watch that stuff," he murmured aloud. "You've been getting along swell, so don't start slipping."
He shaved. He dressed, standing in front of the doorlength mirror, and unconsciously, contentedly, he began to hum. He looked like a different man these days. More important, he felt like one. He was still unsure of himself, still inclined to jump down people's throats for little or no cause, but not nearly to the extent he had used to be. All the old, ugly impulses were vanishing or becoming atrophied. Withering in these strange new feelings of security, an environment which asked no more than he could decently give.
The Hanlon had no interests whatsoever in its guests' morals. Its concern was not so much with what they did, but how they did it. As long as they were circumspect, they could do anything they chose to within reason. It was only when they became rowdy, or otherwise acted to the hotel's disadvantage, that McKenna was called in.
It wasn't that way everywhere, according to Olin Westbrook. In many big hotels, the house dick had to be a keyhole-peeper, a sneak and a snoop. Otherwise, his employers would get a reputation for running a loose house, and the trade would go to their competition. But the Hanlon had no competition, nor would it ever have any. So it could rock along in the easy-going style of its area. And Bugs McKenna had to do nothing offensive to his selfrespect.
He heard the rattle of silver as a coffee tray was set down outside his door. Bringing it in, he took it over by the window, sniffing its steam happily as he filled a cup. Now, this was something like it, he thought. To live in a nice place-- be treated just about the same as a paying guest--and get paid for doing it.
Of course, Joyce Hanlon was kind of a nuisance. Just a little too interested in how he was getting along, too friendly for comfort. On the other hand, it was a lot better for her to be that way--he guessed--than uninterested and unfriendly. And, anyway, nothing was perfect.
He wasn't kicking a bit, Bugs McKenna wasn't. No, sir, not one little bit. He was satisfied with things just like they were. Later on, perhaps, he might want something more out of life than he had now. But for the present. .