11/22/63 полностью

“The facts are nobody dressed like you was on the day you came into my store makes a bet like that. For a man dressed like you was, an impulse bet is ten dollars, a double sawbuck at most. But the Pirates came through, that is also the facts. And I’m starting to think Eddie G might be right. Not that you’re a devil or a ghoul or an ESP gizmo, nothing like that, but how about maybe you know somebody who knows something? Like the fix is in and the Pirates are supposed to win in seven?”

“Nobody fixes baseball, Roth. Not since the Black Sox in 1919. You run a book, you must know that.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You know my name! Hey, maybe you are an ESP guy. But I ain’t got all day.”

He glanced at his watch, as if to confirm this. It was big and clunky, probably a Rolex.

“I try to see where you live when you come in to collect, but you hold your thumb over your address. That’s okay. Lotta guys do that. I decide I’m gonna let it go. I should send some boys down the street to beat the shit out of you, maybe even kill you so that Eddie G’s mind — what’s left of it — can be at rest? Because some guy took shit odds and beat me out of twelve hundred? Fuck that, what Eddie G don’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, with you out of the way, he’d just start thinking about something else. Maybe that Henry Ford was the Annie Christ or sumshit. Carmo, he’s not listening again and that pisses me off.”

Carmo swung the pipe at my midsection. It struck me below the ribs with paralyzing force. There was pain, first jagged, then swallowed in a growing explosion of heat, like a fireball.

“Hurts, don’t it?” Carmo said. “Gets you right in the old kazeenie.”

“I think you ruptured something,” I said. I heard a hoarse steam-engine sound and realized that was me, panting.

“I hope he fucking did,” Roth said. “I let you go, you dumbbell! I fucking let you go! I forgot about you! Then you turn up at Frank’s in Fort Worth to bet the goddam Case-Tiger fight. Exact same MO — big bet on the underdog and all the odds you can get. This time you predict the exact fucking round. So here’s what’s going to happen, my friend: you’re going to tell me how you knew. If you do that, I take some pictures of you like you are now and Eddie G’s satisfied. He knows he can’t have you dead, because Carlos told him no, and Carlos is the one guy he listens to, even now. But if he sees you fucked up… aw, but you ain’t fucked up enough quite yet. Fuck him up some more, Carmo. Do the face.”

So Carmo hammered my face while the other two held me. He broke my nose, closed my left eye, knocked out a few teeth, and tore open my left cheek. I kept thinking, I’ll pass out or they’ll kill me, either way the pain will stop. But I didn’t pass out, and at some point Carmo quit. He was breathing hard, and there were red splotches on his yellow rawhide gloves. Sunshine came in through the kitchen windows and made cheery oblongs on the faded linoleum.

“That’s better,” Roth said. “Get the Polaroid out of the truck, Carmo. Hustle, now. I want to finish up here.”

Before leaving, Carmo stripped off his gloves and put them on the table next to the lead pipe. Some of the felt strips had come loose. They were soaked with blood. My face was throbbing, but my abdomen was worse. There, the heat continued to spread. Something was very wrong down there.

“One more time, Amberson. How’d you know the fix was in? Who told you? The truth.”

“It was just a guess.” I tried to tell myself I sounded like a man with a bad cold, but I didn’t. I sounded like a man who’d just had the shit beaten out of him.

He picked up the pipe and tapped it against one pudgy hand. “Who told you, fuckface?”

“Nobody. Gutierrez was right. I’m a devil, and devils can see the future.”

“You’re running out of chances.”

“Wanda’s too tall for you, Roth. And too skinny. When you’re on top of her, you must look like a toad trying to fuck a log. Or maybe—”

His placid face wrinkled into rage. It was a complete transformation, and it happened in less than a second. He swung the pipe at my head. I got my left arm up and heard it crack like a birch-branch overloaded with ice. This time when I sagged, the goons let me drop to the floor.

“Fuckin wiseass, how I hate a fuckin wiseass.” This seemed to come from a great distance. Or a great height. Or both. I was finally getting ready to pass out, and ever so grateful to go. But I had enough vision left to see Carmo when he came back in with a Polaroid camera. It was big and bulky, the kind where the lens comes out on a kind of accordion.

“Turn im over,” Roth said. “Let’s get his good side.” As the goons did so, Carmo handed Roth the camera, and Roth handed Carmo the pipe. Then Roth raised the camera to his face and said, “Watch the birdie, you fuckin spunkbucket. Here’s one for Eddie G…”

Flash.

“… and one for my own personal collection, which I don’t actually have but which I may now start…”