"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Death on D Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

strain to hear. “Growin’ up the way I did, I got me a special hankerin for colored girls.”

“We do have a girl,” Lucinda said. “Her name's Jeanne. I'm sure she'd be happy to see you.”

He glanced at the front door then, and she could sense how nervous he was. “I'd like to talk first, but if
my friends find me with her...”

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. Lucinda had heard that request dozens of times.

“Why don't you go to the back parlor?” Lucinda said, pointing the way. “I'll have her join you in just a
few minutes.”

He'd smiled then. She'd thought it a particularly gentle smile, grateful really, and she'd smiled back. She
hadn't thought anything of it, not even when she'd heard the tray and the thud. Jeanne knew the
rules—clients should be taken upstairs once the transaction was to begin—but sometimes men were too
eager. That was a rule Lucinda was always willing to bend, as long as the man paid in full.

It was when the hour was up and then some that Lucinda got impatient. She'd expected her southern
drifter to leave long before that. So she'd pushed open the door to the back parlor, and she'd seen
Jeanne and she'd hoped that somehow the girl had lived through it, which was why she'd sent for Doc at
the same time she'd sent for the sheriff.

Which was why she was willing to talk to me.

“This sort of thing got me closed down in St Louis,” she said. “I been real careful about it in Hope's
Pass. I run a safe house and my girls get treated good. You catch this man, Will, and you make everyone
know that what he did had nothing to do with me.”

“You should check your clientele for weapons, Cinda,” I said.

“I do. They have to leave their guns at the door.” Then her eyes brightened and she held up one chubby
finger. “Just a moment.”

She walked toward the door, moved a picture and opened a wall safe. From inside, she pulled out a
small pistol.

“I suppose all your clients know that's there,” I said.

Lucinda nodded. “That's where we keep the guns. The real safe is somewhere else.”

She studied the pistol for a moment, then came toward me. “I got this off him before he went into the
back parlor. Obviously, he didn't come back for it, although he should have.”

“Should have?” I stood.

“I've never handled a gun quite like this one before.” She extended the gun to me, and I froze.

It was a Remington-Elliot single shot Derringer, .41 rimfire caliber, with walnut grips and blue plating.
“You sure that was his?” I asked.