"Copy of John MacDonald- The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Every" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

I hope the money is on the way, because if it isn't, we might be in here a long, long time. No matter when we get out, I'm thinking I might go info some other line of work. I've sort of lost my confidence.

Very truly yours, Sam Giotti.

Chapter One..

Slowly, with a dedicated effort, Kirby tipped the universe back into focus. He heard the after-image of his voice going on and on, a tiresome encyclical of complaint, a paean to the scuffed spirit. The woman across the table from him was in silhouette against the window, a window big as a tennis court on edge, and through the window was an ocean, rosy with dusk or dawn. It made a peach gleam on her bare tanned shoulders and backlighted a creamy weight of blondness.

Atlantic, he thought. Once he had established the ocean, he found the time relationship simplified. Looking from Florida, it had to be dawn.

"You are Charla," he said carefully.

"Of course, dear Kirby," she said, amused, slightly guttural, almost laughing. "Your good new friend, Charla."

The man sat at Kirby's left, a solid, polished man, tailored, clipped, manicured. He made a soft sound of amusement. "A Spanish verb," he said. "Charlar. To chat. To make meaningless talk. An irony because her great talent is not in talking, but in listening."

"My great talent, Joseph?" she said with mock astonishment.

"Your most unusual one, my dear. But we have both enjoyed listening to Kirby."

Kirby nailed it all to a wall inside his head, like small signs. Charla, Joseph, Atlantic, dawn. He sought other clues. It could be Saturday morning. The burial service had been on Friday at eleven. The conference with the lawyers had been at two in the afternoon. And he had begun drinking at three.

He turned his head with care and looked at the empty lounge. A barman in white jacket stood under prism lights paled by the dawn, arms folded, chin on his chest.

"Do they keep these places open all night?" Kirby asked.

"Hardly ever," Joseph said. "But they respond nicely to any small gift of money. A gesture of friendship. At the official closing time, Kirby, you still had much to say."

It was brighter in the lounge. They looked at him fondly. They were mature, handsome people. They were the finest two people he had ever met. They had slight accents, an international flavor, and they looked at him with warmth and with love.

Suddenly he had a horrid suspicion. "Are you, are you some kind of journalists, or anything like that?"

They both laughed aloud. "Oh no, my sweet," Charla said.

He felt ashamed of himself. "Uncle Omar is, was, death on any kind of publicity. We always had to be so careful. He paid a firm in New York thirty thousand dollars a year to keep him out of the papers. But people were always prying. They'd get some tiny little rumor about Omar Krepps and make a great big story out of it, and Uncle Omar would be absolutely furious."

Charla put her hand over his, a warm pressure. "But dear Kirby, it does not matter now, does it?"

"I guess not."

"My brother and I are not journalists, of course, but you could speak to journalists, you know. You could let the world know what a vile thing he did to you, what a horrid way he repaid your years of selfless devotion."

She was so understanding, Kirby wanted to weep. But he felt an uncomfortable twinge of honesty. "Not so selfless. I mean, you have an uncle worth fifty-million dollars, there's an ulterior motive."

"But you told us how you had quit many times," Joseph said. The warmth of Charla's hand was removed. Kirby missed it.

"But I always went back," Kirby admitted. "He'd tell me I was his favorite nephew. He'd tell me he needed me. For what? All he ever did was keep me on the run. No chance to have a life of my own. Crazy errands ail over the world. Eleven years of it, ever since I got out of college. Even there, he told me the courses to take. That old man ran my whole life."

"You told us, my dear," Charla said, her voice breaking. "All those years of devotion."