"Kate Wilhelm - And the Angels Sing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

From the University of Indiana to a small paper in Evanston, on to Philadelphia, New York. He felt
he had been out plenty, and now he simply wanted a place where people lived in individual houses
and chose the pottery they drank their coffee from. Six years ago he had left New York, on
vacation, he had said; he had come to the end of the world and stayed.

"Why haven't you gone already?" he asked Mary Beth. She smiled her crooked smile and shook her
head. "I was married, you know that? To a fisherman. That's what girls on the coast do, marry
fishermen, or lumbermen, or policemen. Me, Miss Original No-talent, herself. Married, playing
house forever. He's out there somewhere. Went out one day and never came home again. So I got a
job with the paper, this and that. Only one thing could be worse than staying here at the end of
the world, and that's being in the world broke. Not my style."

She finished her sandwich and coffee, and now seemed too restless to sit still. She went to the
window over the sink and gazed out. The light was gray. "You don't belong here any more than I do.
What happened? Some woman tell you to get lost? Couldn't get the job you wanted? Some young slim
punk worm in front of you? You're dodging just like me."

All the above, he thought silently, and said, "Look, I've been thinking. I can't go to the office
without raising suspicion, in case anyone's looking for her, I mean. I haven't been in the office
before one or two in the afternoon for more than five years. But you can. See if anything's come
over the wires, if there's a search on, if there was a wreck of any sort. You know. If the FBI's
nosing around, or the military. Anything at all."

Mary Beth rejoined him at the table and poured more coffee, her restlessness gone, an intent look
on her face. Her business face, he thought.

"Okay. First some pictures, though. And we'll have to have a story about my car. It's been out
front all night," she added crisply. "So, if anyone brings it up, I'll have to say I keep you
company now and then. Okay?"

He nodded, and thought without bitterness that that would give them a laugh at Connally's Tavern.
That reminded him of Truman Cox. "They'll get around to him eventually, and he might remember
seeing her. Of course, he assumed it was the Boland girl. But they'll know we saw someone. Even if
no one asks him directly, he knows if a flea farts in this town."

Mary Beth shrugged. "So you saw the Boland girl and got to thinking about her and her trade, and
gave me a call. No problem. "

He looked at her curiously. "You really don't care if they start that scuttlebutt around town,
about you and me?"

"Eddie," she said almost too sweetly, "I'd admit to fucking a pig if it would get me the hell out
of here. I'll go on home for a shower, and by then maybe it'll be time enough to get on my horse
and go to the office. But first some pictures."

At the bedroom door he asked in a hushed voice, "Can you get them without using the flash? That
might send her into shock or something."

She gave him a dark look. "Will you for Christ sake stop calling it a her!" She scowled at the
figure on the bed. "Let's bring in a lamp, at least. You know I have to uncover it."