"Robert B. Parker - Poodle Springs (v1.1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Robert B)

"Really?"

"Yes, I've been employed to find him by a man who claims your husband owes him $100,000."

"That's ridiculous."

"My employer says that your husband ran up $100,000 in gambling debts at his, ah, casino and left him holding lOU's for the amount."

"lOU's for illegal gambling are not enforceable," she snapped.

"Yes, Ma'am. But it has put my client in a difficult position with his employer."

"Mr. Marlowe, this is no doubt of interest to someone. But surely not to me, or to anyone who knows my husband. My husband does not gamble. Nor does he give people lOU's. He pays for what he buys. He does not need to do otherwise. He makes a good living, and I am the fortunate recipient of my father's considerable generosity."

"Could you tell me where your husband is now, Ma'am? Perhaps if I talked with him I could clear this up."

"Les is on location in San Benedict with a film company. He is doing publicity photographs. Studios often employ him for that sort of thing. He is a very accomplished and well-regarded photographer of young women."

She liked the young women part the way a cow likes beefsteak.

"I see that," I said. "Which studio is he working for?"

Mrs. Valentine shrugged, as if the question were negligible. "I don't keep track," she said.

When she wasn't speaking she kept her lips slightly apart and her tongue moved restlessly in her mouth. "And I am certainly not going to have him beset with some wild accusations from a man known to be a criminal."

"I didn't say who my employer was," I said.

"I know who it is, it's that Mr. Lipshultz. He approached me directly and I let him know then what I thought of his cock-and-bull story."

I took Lippy's IOU out of my inside pocket and held it up for her to see.

She shook her head angrily. "He showed me that, too," she said. "I don't believe it. It's not Les's signature."

I got up and walked to one of the artsy framed photographs on the wall. In the lower right corner they were signed Les Valentine in the same innocuous cramped little hand that I had on the IOU. I held the IOU signature beside the photo signature. I held the pose for a minute with my eyebrows raised.

She stared at the two signatures as if she'd never seen either one. Her tongue darted about in her mouth. She was breathing a little harder than she had been.

She rose suddenly and walked to the bleached oak sideboard under her father's picture.

"I will have a drink, Mr. Marlowe. Would you care to join me?"

"No, Ma'am," I said, "but I'll smoke my cigarette now, I think."

I shook one loose and lipped it out of the pack. I lit it and drew in a lungful of smoke and let it out slowly through my nose. Mrs. Valentine poured herself some kind of green liquor and sipped it two or three quick times before she turned back to me.

"My husband enjoys gambling, Mr. Marlowe. I know that, and I hoped to prevent you from knowing that."

I worked on my cigarette a little while she drank most of the rest of her green drink.