"Goodis, David - Nightfall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodis David)

"Never been married. I come from Detroit and I took engineering at Minnesota. If you like the rah-rah, I was an All-Western Conference guard. Then I was in Central America and we were showing them some new stunts with electricity and water power and so forth. While I was down there I began painting. For relaxation. Someone told me I could paint and I took him up on it. I did a lot of painting down there. Wind-up was engineering played second fiddle and I came back to the States and enrolled at an art school in Chicago. If there'd been a lot of money I would have gone in for the fine arts. But there was very little money and I had to go commercial. Things were breaking very nicely and the luck stayed with me all through those years and all through the war. I wasn't even scratched."
"Doing what?"
"Navy. I was a damage-control officer on a battleship."
A dull tone had crept into his voice and he wanted to get rid of it, he wanted to be amusing, diverting. He wanted to show her a nice time. He told himself this was a good thing, this thing happening to him now. She was something clean and refreshing; he felt sure this was the something he had sensed was going to happen tonight. He was glad, and yet there was a certain uneasy feeling along with that gladness, and he couldn't figure it out.
The food came and they ate silently. Every now and then he lifted his eyes and watched her for a moment or so. He liked the way she ate. A quiet sort of gusto. She took her time and yet she didn't waste any time. Her table etiquette was an easy, relaxed thing that made it a pleasure to sit here with her.
After the food, Vanning ordered peach cordials. They sipped the cordials and smiled at each other.
"I should be ashamed of myself," she said. "I mean, you picking me up like this. Or rather, me picking you up. But you called it right, Jim. I was very lonely, or let's even say desperate. I'll be looking forward to seeing you again."
"When?"
"Whenever you feel like seeing me."
"You don't know how good that sounds."
They finished their cordials and Vanning paid the check and they moved toward the door. They had to go down a few steps, because the door was below street level, with other steps leading up to the pavement, and now Vanning was opening the door, now they were going up the steps, now he knew something was wrong, he saw the shadow cutting in on light issuing from the restaurant, he saw the forms following the shadows and he told himself to twist away and race back into the restaurant and try a rear exit. But already it was too late for that, and the lateness was within him. He was angry, and the anger got the better of discretion, and he was going up the steps, taking her with him but not knowing she was there with him. And suddenly, as the three men came out of darkness and confronted him, he knew he had been expecting it. This was really it. This was the something he had expected would happen tonight.
The three of them stood up there at the top of the steps.
And one of them, his face half black, the other side of his face orange-yellow where the light hit it, smiled and took a cigarette from his lips, lowered his eyes toward Vanning and said, "Okay, bud. It's all over."


Her hand gripped his wrist, and he realized she was there, and along with that realization there was another, and it was a thunder burst; it made him blink, it made him stagger without budging. He took hold of her clutching hand, twisted her hand with violence, threw her away from him. She gasped.
There was a laugh from one of the men up there.
Vanning walked up the steps toward him. They stepped back to give him room, and yet they surrounded him, the three men and the girl beside him.
And then one of the men looked at Martha and said, "Thanks, honey, that was a beautiful piece of work."
"Yes," Vanning said. "It was terrific."
"You," said the man who had just spoken, and he smiled easily at Vanning, "you don't talk now. You do your talking later." Then he looked past Vanning, looked at the girl and said, "You can go home now, honey." He laughed with pure enjoyment. "We'll call you when we need you."
"All right," she said. "Do that."
Then she came walking up the steps and, coming abreast of Vanning, she looked at him with nothing in her eyes, and it lasted for an exploding second, and then she turned and walked away.
The three men closed in on Vanning. Two of them had their hands in the pockets of dark tropical worsted suits, but hands alone couldn't make the pockets bulge that much, and Vanning told himself to stop thinking in terms of a break.
One of the men said, "Let's take a little walk across the street."
The four of them crossed the street, walked down the block to where a large, bright green sedan was the only interference with thick midnight blackness.
The man who was doing most of the talking said, "Now we'll take a little ride." He climbed into the front seat. In the back, Vanning sat with a man on either side of him. His brain was empty. His mouth was dry and a coldness was getting itself settled within him, and now the car was in gear, going down the street, making a turn and picking up speed. They made a turn. They were going downtown, then they were swinging away from a wide street and going toward Brooklyn Bridge.
"If you tell us now," said the man behind the wheel, "we'll let you out and you can go home."
"I can picture that," Vanning said.
"Why don't you tell us now?" the man said. "You're going to tell us sooner or later."
"No," Vanning said. "I can't do that."
"You can't do that now, you mean. Because you're tough. But it won't last long. When we get to the point where you're not tough any more, you'll say what we want you to say."
"It isn't that," Vanning said. "I don't feel like getting myself hurt. If I knew, I'd tell you."
"Come off that," the man said. "That's in the heartache department. That's crying the blues. You know where you'll get with that? Nowhere."
"That's too bad," Vanning said. "Because then we'll both be nowhere."
"He's too tough," the driver said. "He's much too tough, I think. What do you say?"
"I say he's too tough," said the man who sat on Vanning's left. He was a big man and he wore glasses, and now he took them off very slowly, put them in a case and put the case in his pocket.
"What do you say, Sam?"
"Yes, he's too tough," said the man on the right, a short, wiry man with very little hair on his head. His arms were folded but slowly unfolding.
"I'm not tough at all," Vanning said. "I'm scared stiff."
"Now he's being funny," the driver said. They were on Brooklyn Bridge. The lights were whizzing in and passing the car, dropping other lights on sides of other cars, and all the light was bouncing around like captured lightning in a black vault.
"How about it?" Sam said.
"Hold it a second," the driver said. "Wait till we get off the bridge."
"I think the bridge is the best place," said the man who had been wearing glasses.
"We'll hold it awhile," the driver said. "Just for a little while, Pete, and then you can have your fun."
"Fun?" Vanning said.
"Sure," Pete said, and he laughed. "The bigger they are, the more fun they are."
"You mean with their hands and feet tied, don't you?"
"I can see you're going to be a lot of fun," Pete said.
The green sedan tore away from Brooklyn Bridge and went slashing into Brooklyn. It went through the city and away from the city and into a section of vacant lots and shallow hills.