Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953
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- Название:Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953
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- Издательство:Flying Eagle Publications
- Жанр:
- Год:1953
- Город:New York
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:5 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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He was pretty fast, because we’d been mixing it up for only a couple seconds — and I think he saved the cowboy's arm. I cooled off a little, nodded at the bartender, and pushed the cowboy ahead of me while I walked him four stools away. Then I let go of him.
“Maybe you better sit here, Cowboy. You must have thought I was kidding. I wasn’t.” I went back and got his drink and sat it in front of him. He didn’t do anything more dangerous than glare at me, so I went back to my drink.
The bartender was squinting at me. I said, “Sorry,” then finished the bourbon and ordered another. He made it silently and I noticed there hadn’t been a peep out of any of the other half-dozen or so customers. Two of them left, but the others ordered more drinks. A little conversation started up again.
I asked the bartender, “Where is the men’s room, anyway?” He pointed toward a door in the rear wall and I got up, leaving the list on the bar, and went back to the john. I went in, slammed the door, then cracked it and peeked through. The cowboy rubbed his arm, glanced at the paper on the bar then looked back toward the rest room. He was good and curious about me. Five more seconds and he got up, walked to my stool and said something to the bartender, then turned the paper over and studied it for half a minute before he slammed it back down on the bar and walked toward me and then out of my sight.
I went back to my stool. The bartender had mopped up my spilled drink and I said, “Freshen that up, will you? You got a phone booth in here?”
He nodded and pointed toward the back of the bar and around to the right. That was where my cowboy had gone. I tucked the list back into my pocket, had a swallow of my drink. In another minute the cowboy came back. He walked up beside me and smiled stiffly.
“Say,” he said. “I wanna apologize. About gettin’ hot.”
I grinned at him. “Sure. Maybe we’re both a little touchy.”
He looked damned uncomfortable, but he stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings?”
“O.K. by me.” I shook his hand.
He lowered his voice a little and said, “I didn’t mean to sound nosy, but the thing is, a good friend of mine is real innerested in Lois, see? So naturally I’m curious. You, uh, know Lois?”
I shook my head.
“You just think she’s cute, huh?”
“That’s right. I just think she’s cute.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Uh, I’d feel bad if you didn’t lemme buy you a drink. No hard feelings, you know, lemme buy you a drink.”
I hesitated and he said to the bartender, “Hey, Frank, give my friend anything he wants, see? Gimme the same.”
Right then I caught movement at the corner of my eye and turned to see Lois walking toward us from the rear of the club. Evidently there was a room back there where she’d changed because she now had on an ankle-length green gown. She walked past us and said to the bartender, “A cool one like this, Frank.” She nodded at the cowboy, then her eyes brushed briefly over mine. I grinned at her as she went by, and after a couple more steps she looked back over her shoulder, and she must have seen where I was looking, then she was at the dice table and reached up to turn on a bright light above it. I’d had a good gander at her as she walked past us and the view was even better with her under that bright light.
The green dress came clear up to her throat then swept down over her body, clinging to her skin like a thin rubber dress a size too small. I’d have given eight to five that she wasn’t wearing a thing under that dress, not a thing, not even frilly things. The dress was like green skin and I decided I could even get used to green skin if it were on Lois.
The bartender mixed up a drink, also green, and sat it on the end of the bar, then gave the cowboy and me our highballs. I picked mine up, got the green thing from the end of the bar, and walked to the dice table.
I handed her the drink. “This must be yours.”
She smiled. “Uh-huh. To match my dress. Pink Ladies for a red dress, creme de cacao for brown. This is creme de menthe.”
I pressed my luck. “I thought for a minute the dress was made out of creme de menthe.”
She didn’t mind. She smiled and said. “You like it?”
“It’s terrific. Clever idea, too. What do you wear with champagne?”
She laughed, and the laugh itself was a little bit like champagne, a soft, bubbling sound that came from far down in her white throat. “That’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it?”
“Frankly, no.” The overhead light burned soft red spots in her dark hair, hair that hung just above shoulder length. It wasn’t quite black, as I’d thought at first, but an off shade like the bar mahogany, a shadow darkness with touches of deep red in it. I had known a couple of dice girls in Hollywood and several in San Francisco where they’re more often seen. Some of them were near idiots, and some were brilliant women who could have been high-powered women executives but made so much at the tables that they stuck to the game. One thing, though, all of them had in common: they were beautiful women, the kind men would look at, women who could make men cheerfully lose a dime or a thousand bucks. Lois was no exception, and she didn’t sound or look stupid. Her face was oval, with dark brown eyes and warm-looking red lips, lips that were still smiling now with white, even teeth behind them.
I reached for my wallet and started to take a buck out of it, then changed my mind and found a twenty, laid it on the green felt.
“What part of that?” she asked.
“All of it. I feel lucky.”
“I like to tell the nice fellows they can’t win in the long run.”
“Thanks,” I said. I looked at her, at the way the dice table fit just over her thighs as she sat on the low stool, light pouring down over her shoulders and silvering the top of her breasts, highlighting their thrusting tips and leaving pools of shadow beneath them, and I added, “But they can’t lose.”
She looked at me for long seconds, her brown eyes half-lidded, then she said, “Shoot it all.”
She shoved one of the leather shakers over to me and I rattled the dice then rolled them up against the board. She looked at them, called my points and picked up the other shaker, held it in front of her and shook the dice vigorously.
She rolled the dice. “See?” she said. “You lose.”
I grinned. “That breaks me. What am I going to do for dinner tonight?”
“I don’t know,” she smiled. “Will you really go hungry?”
“Maybe I can bum a meal.”
“Maybe. Are you really broke?”
“Huh-uh. Just fishing. Carefully.”
“You don’t look like the careful type.”
“Depends.”
I had noticed something block out the dim light coming in through the entrance. I’d been so interested in conversation that I hadn’t looked around, but now the cowboy stepped up on my left.
“Hey, Pally,” he said.
I very clearly heard him say “Pally.” I looked at him.
There was a tight grin on his square face. “Remember, a friend of mine was innerested in Lois?”
“So he’s innerested. So am I. So what?”
“So here’s my good friend, Pally.” He jerked a thumb.
I looked around at where I figured the guy’s face would be and I was looking, so help me, at his tie clasp. I looked up. And up. And there it was. He wasn’t a man, but a monstrosity. When I found his face I didn’t recognize the features right away because I’d been too busy wondering when I’d get to it, but a few seconds after I saw the long thin head with the bony cheekbones and long sharp nose, the wide-spaced dark eyes and high forehead dwindling into wispy brown hair, I made him. Once you’ve seen a guy that big, you don’t have much trouble remembering him.
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