Читаем The Sins of the Fathers полностью

"Yes. Wendy cried when I packed my stuff and left. She kept saying she didn't know what she would do without me. I told her she could get another roommate without any trouble, someone who would fit in with her life better. She said she didn't want anyone who fit in too well because she was more than one kind of person. I didn't know what she meant at the time."

"Do you know now?"

"I think so. I think she wanted someone who was a little straighter than she was, someone who was not a part of the sexual scene she was involved in. I think now that she was a little disappointed when I took that first double date with her.

She did her best to talk me into it, but she was disappointed that she was successful. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think so. It fits in with some other things." There was something she had said earlier that had been bothering me, and I poked around in my memory, looking for it. "You said you weren't surprised that she was seeing older men."

"No, that didn't surprise me."

"Why not?"

"Well, because of what happened at school."

"What happened at school?"

She frowned. She didn't say anything, and I repeated the question.

"I don't want to get anybody in trouble."

"She was involved with someone at school? An older man?"

"You have to remember I didn't know her very well. I knew who she was to say hello to, and maybe I was in a class or two with her at one time or another, but I barely knew her."

"Was it tied in with her leaving school just a few months shy of graduation?"

"I don't really know that much about it."

I said, "Marcia, look at me. Anything you tell me about what happened at college will be something I would otherwise find out, anyway. You'll just save me a great deal of time and travel. I'd rather not have to make a trip out to Indiana to ask a lot of people some embarrassing questions. I-"

"Oh, don't do that!"

"I'd rather not. But it's up to you."

She told it in bits and pieces, largely because she didn't know too much of it.

There had been a scandal shortly before Wendy's departure from campus. It seemed that she had been having an affair with a professor of art history, a middle-aged man with children Wendy's age or older. The man had wanted to leave his wife and marry Wendy, the wife had swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, was rushed to the hospital, had her stomach pumped, and survived. In the course of the ensuing debacle, Wendy packed a suitcase and disappeared.

And according to campus gossip this was not the first time she had been involved with an older man.

Her name had been linked with several professors, all of them considerably older than she was.

"I'm sure a lot of it was just talk," Marcia Thal told me. "I don't think she could have had affairs with that many men without more people knowing about it, but when the whole thing blew up, people were really talking about her. I guess some of it must have been true."

"Then you knew when you first roomed with her that she was unconventional."

"I told you. I didn't care about her morals. I didn't see anything wrong with sleeping with a lot of men.

Not if that was what she wanted to do." She considered this for a moment. "I guess I've changed since then."

"This professor, the art historian. What was his name?"

"I'm not going to tell you his name. It's not important. Maybe you can find out yourself. I'm sure you can, but I'm not going to tell you."

"Was it Cottrell?"

"No. Why?"

"Did she know anyone named Cottrell? In New York?"

"I don't think so. The name doesn't ring a bell or anything."

"Was there anyone she was seeing regularly? More than the others?"

"Not really. Of course she could have had someone who came over a lot during the afternoons and I wouldn't have known it."

"How much money do you suppose she was making?"

"I don't know. That wasn't really something we talked about. I suppose her average price was thirty dollars. On the average. No more than that. A lot of men gave twenty. She talked about men who would give her a hundred, but I think they were pretty rare."

"How many tricks a week do you think she turned?"

"I honestly don't know. Maybe she had someone over three nights a week, maybe four nights a week.

But she was also seeing people in the daytime. She wasn't trying to make a fortune, just enough to live the way she wanted to live. A lot of the time she would turn down dates. She never saw more than one person a night. It wasn't always a full date with dinner and everything. Sometimes a man would just come over, and she would go straight to bed with him. But she turned down a lot of dates, and if she went with a man and she didn't like him she wouldn't see him again. Also, when she was seeing someone she had never met before, if she didn't like him she wouldn't go to bed with him, and then of course he wouldn't give her any money.

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Она легко шагала по коридорам управления, на ходу читая последние новости и едва ли реагируя на приветствия. Длинные прямые черные волосы доходили до края коротких кожаных шортиков, до них же не доходили филигранно порванные чулки в пошлую черную сетку, как не касался последних короткий, едва прикрывающий грудь вульгарный латексный алый топ. Но подобный наряд ничуть не смущал самого капитана Сейли Эринс, как не мешала ее свободной походке и пятнадцати сантиметровая шпилька на дизайнерских босоножках. Впрочем, нет, как раз босоножки помешали и значительно, именно поэтому Сейли была вынуждена читать о «Самом громком аресте столетия!», «Неудержимой службе разведки!» и «Наглом плевке в лицо преступной общественности».  «Шеф уроет», - мрачно подумала она, входя в лифт, и не глядя, нажимая кнопку верхнего этажа.

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