The right to sing the blues an-3
Page 20
The envelope contained a single ticket for a coach seat on the 4:45 Amtrak City of New Orleans to St. Louis.
Frick said, "Mr. Collins wants you to take a train instead of a plane so you get the feeling of distance."
"I'll like that feeling," Nudger said.
Frick's smile broadened, lost its faraway, unsettling quality, and became genuinely friendly, even admiring. "You did okay, my friend. You did what was right for Ineida. Mr. Collins appreciates that."
"What about Fat Jack?" Nudger asked.
Frick's warm smile changed subtly, went cold. It became the dreamy, unpleasant sort of smile Nudger had seen before.
"Where Fat Jack is now," Frack said, "most of his friends are alligators."
"After Fat Jack talked to you," said Frick, "he went to Mr. Collins. He couldn't make himself walk out on all that possible money; some guys just have to play all their cards. He told Mr. Collins that for a certain amount of cash he would reveal Ineida's whereabouts, but it all had to be done in a hurry."
Nudger felt a coolness move over him, swirl around his bare feet. Marty Sievers had been persuasive enough last night to convince Fat Jack to try what he, Sievers, had been planning. But Fat Jack wasn't Sievers. Nobody was, anymore.
"He revealed her whereabouts in a hurry, all right," Frick said, "but for free." Astoundingly, he gave a sudden, soft giggle. A woman's laugh. "That fat man talked and talked. Faster and faster. In fact, he kept talking till nobody was listening, till he couldn't talk anymore."
Nudger swallowed dryly. He forgot about breakfast. Fat Jack had been a bad businessman to the end, dealing in desperation instead of distance. Maybe he hadn't had enough of the blues during the past several years, and too much of the good life; maybe he couldn't picture going on without that life. That was no problem to him now.
"You better pack, my friend," Frick said, gently patting Nudger's shoulder. "Train north pulls out on time."
Both men turned and left the room.
Nudger closed the door behind them. He looked at his Amtrak ticket in its red-and-blue folder. He looked at his bare feet. He looked at his wristwatch. There was plenty of time to catch the train. In fact, he had much of the day to kill. But he didn't feel like killing it here, or anywhere else where anyone connected with Collins or Sievers or Fat Jack or murder might find him. He decided to check out of the hotel, put his suitcase in a locker at the train station, and find some quiet place to eat breakfast where no one would bother him. Then he would walk around New Orleans for a while, listen to a little jazz played by the street musicians in the French Quarter, and maybe have a late lunch at the station before boarding the train for St. Louis and home and Claudia.
He showered, dressed quickly, and began to pack. Two days after Nudger got home, he found a flat, padded package with a New Orleans postmark in his mail. He placed it on his desk and cautiously opened it.
The package contained two items: a check from David Collins made out to Nudger for more than twice the amount of Fat Jack's uncollectible fee; and an old blues record in its original wrapper, a fifties rendition of "You Got the Reach but Not the Grasp."
It featured Fat Jack McGee on clarinet.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-17ecc6-cfa8-9549-a382-4143-6610-447487
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 14.05.2011
Created using: Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/