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

"Well, Christ," Bugs frowned, "I should hope not."
"Sure, not. Not a word." Westbrook tottered toward the door. "So just forget it, huh? Enough trouble now without . . ."
The door closed behind him.
Bugs stared at its polished surface, a sickish disturbance spreading through the pit of his stomach.
_He was supposed to bump off old man Hanlon? That was why Joyce Hanlon and Lou Ford had done so much string-pulling to get him this job?_
Nuts! How crazy could you get, anyway? Stifi, if that wasn't the reason behind Ford's and Joyce's unusual interest in him--and, of course, it wasn't, what . . .?
Well, it was like Ford had said. A good tough house-dick at the Hanlon saved work for him and his deputies. _But that wasn't true. Nothing had happened at the Hanlon thus far that required any great amount of toughness or muscular activity_.
So? Well, so nothing. Perhaps things had just been unusually quiet so far. Or, well, maybe Ford had just been doing him a favor in a way that would be easy for him to accept. That last didn't seem very likely, but.
Ford was a grafter, a crook. And Joyce Hanlon was obviously pretty low-down. The two of them were both moneyhungry. And if they were looking for a guy to pull a murder, what could be more natural than to pick someone who'd--?
Bugs let out a disgusted snort, a sound filled with forced disbelief. He told himself that just because Ollie Westbrook was acting screwy was no excuse for him to do so. Ford and Joyce knew that he was on the level. He'd made it damned clear that he was, and that he intended to stay that way. And if they'd actually been looking for a killer, he wouldn't have got the job.
That was that. Poor Ollie had just been grasping at straws, saying the first thing that popped into his mind.
Bugs slipped on his shoulder holster, with its .38 Police Special. Then, putting on his hat and coat, he left the room.
He was supposed to make a complete tour of the hotel at least once a night. Tonight, as he sometimes did, he decided to make part of it before eating, and the rest afterwards.
Since he was here, he did his own floor first, walking the main hall and the two wing corridors. Then, mounting the two flights of steps to the fourteenth--the top--floor, he began working his way downward.
To save doubling back on his tracks, he descended the east-wing steps on one floor, those on the west wing the next. In this fashion, he arrived some twenty minutes later on the eleventh floor. . .at the room of the auditor, Dudley.
He had been thinking about Westbrook, meanwhile. Worrying about him. Fretting himself into a state of stricken conscience. He'd acted like a heel, he decided. Just turned the little man down flat without a crumb of comfort. Naturally, he couldn't go to the lengths that Westbrook had suggested, but there was every chance in the world that they wouldn't be necessary. Westbrook was too rattled to think straight, to suggest anything but threats and violence. Whereas, if the auditor actually was a thief, he might easily knuckle under to a few firm words.
At any rate, Bugs thought, there was no harm in trying. And he certainly owed it to Westbrook to make the try.
So, impulsively, without stopping to listen at the door-- and, God, how he was to regret that later!--he knocked briskly.
There was silence. The kind of silence that follows the sudden cessation of sound. Bugs waited a moment, and knocked again.
Still silence. Then, a sudden creak and rattle, the brisk chatter of the bathroom shower. And Dudley's irritated voice.
"Yeah? Who is it?"
"McKenna," Bugs said. "I want to see you."
"This time of night? What the hell, Bugs?"
Bugs didn't say anything. Dudley muttered something and turned the key in the lock, stepping into the bathroom as Bugs entered. "Be right with you," he called sourly. "Just as soon as I dry off, and get . . ."
He slammed the door, cutting off the last of the sentence. Bugs went on through the entrance areaway and sat down. Except for the moonlight drifting through the window drapes, the room lay in darkness. The bed was rumpled as though slept in. Dudley's clothes were flung over a chair. Or, rather, part of them were. The trousers, with the belt half-pulled out of them, lay on the floor in an untidy heap.
Bugs looked at them, frowning unconsciously. That was funny. Dudley was kind of a lady's man. A real dude about his clothes. It was strange that he'd drop them on the floor in a wad, as strange, say, as his getting out of bed in the middle of the night to take a bath . . .
The bathroom door opened. A figure darted past him suddenly. Dudley his hair rumpled, naked save for the towel tied around his middle. He snatched up the trousers, clawed frantically at the inside surface of the belt. He dropped them again and turned on Bugs, eyes glittering in the darkness, teeth bared in an animal-like grimace.
"All right," he hissed. "Let's have it, you son-of-a-bitch!"
"Huh?" Bugs scrambled from his chair. "What the hell are you--"
"It's mine. You can't prove that it isn't. I know the law, see, and you either fork it over or--_or by God, I'll kill you!_"
The words came out in a rush. He came at Bugs with a rush. And hell, he was a set-up for Bugs, a flabby, wildswinging punk like that.
Bugs side-stepped expertly, effortlessly. As the auditor shot past him, he chopped his hand against the back of his neck. "Now, simmer down," he warned, turning. "I don't know what--what--"
He stopped talking. There was no one to talk to. There were only the soles of Dudley's bare feet on the window sill . . . and then they were no longer there. They had slid over it, following his body through the fluttering drapes.
Into the eleven-story void of space.

5
Ted Gusick set down his load of baggage and turned to the cross, dyspeptic-looking guest. In hushed, funereal tones, he advised the gentleman that the house doctor was on call at all times, and that the corner drugstore had twenty-four hour prescription service.
"Of course, you may be all right here," he said on a note of hopeful worriment. "A lot of people--the really rugged types, you know--it hardly bothers 'em at all. But if you _should_ feel yourself getting sick . . ."
The man stared at him nervously. He asked worried questions. Dolefully, Ted declined to reply.
"I guess I've said too much already, sir. After all, I've got a big family to support, and if I lost my job. . ." He hesitated, then threw in the clincher. "Probably I wouldn't have said anything at all if you hadn't been double-rated. That was just a little more than I could take. To charge you a double rate for a room like this, this room above _all_ rooms . . ."
"What? That derk charged me double, you said?" Anger was added to the man's nervousness. "What's all this about, anyway? What's wrong with this room?"
Ted wouldn't tell him. He just couldn't, as much as he wanted to and felt that he should. He was just scraping by, see, and he was too old to get another job. And--
"Oh, thank you, sir," he said smoothly, pocketing the guest's five-dollar tip. "Now, don't let on that I told you, but they call this the dead room. I guess it's something in the wallpaper, know what I mean? Arsenic or something like that. Anyway, practically everyone that stays in it gets sick as a dog, and quite a few of 'em have died. So if you'll take my advice . . ."
He left as the guest was acting on his advice; i.e., he had Leslie Eaton, the derk, on the phone, and was demanding another room. . . "a decent room, by God," he concluded furiously. "And don't try to gyp me on the price either."
Thoroughly bewildered, the clerk agreed to a transfer. Ted accepted another key from him, moved the gentleman to a room less desirable than the first one, and collected a tip of another dollar.
The next guest to arrive was flushed faced, jaundiced of eye. After considerable sly coaxing, and a ten-dollar tip, Ted revealed to him that there were indeed a great many "girls" in the hotel.
"The clerk's got a whole stable of 'em. Some of the hottest babes you ever laid eyes on. Now, don't let on that I told you because he gets kind of embarrassed about it. But just tell him you know damned well he's got 'em--you been hearing about it all over Texas--and that if he don't come across, the old crap's going to fly . . ."
The gentleman licked his lips. He reached for the telephone, and Ted made his exit. Arriving at the elevator bank, he found Ed waiting for him.
"Let's have your passkey." His brother spoke impatiently. "Old man Reimers just came in fried to the gills."
"Forget him. If he's really fried, he hasn't got any dough left."