Ian Fleming Bond 02 (1954) Live And Let Die

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generally bound to the chair, was lying or not.
She varied her replies according to whether she sensed these people were good
or evil. She knew that her verdict might often be a death sentence but she
felt indifferent to the fate of those she judged to be evil. Very few of them
were white.
Bond jotted down the dates and details of all these occasions.
Everything she told him added to the picture of a very powerful and active
man, ruthless and cruel, commanding a huge network of operations.
All she knew of the gold coins was that she had several times had to question
men on how many they had passed and the price they had been paid for them.
Very often, she said, they were lying on both counts.
Bond was careful to divulge-very little of what he himself knew or guessed.
His growing warmth towards
Solitaire and his desire for her body were in a compartment which had no
communicating door with his professional life.
The Silver Meteor came in on time and they were both relieved to be on their
way again and to get away from the dreary world of the big junction.
The train sped on down through Florida, through the forests and swamps, stark
and bewitched with
Spanish moss, and through the mile upon mile of citrus groves.
All through the centre of the state the moss lent a dead, spectral feeling to
the landscape. Even the little townships through which they passed had a grey
skeletal aspect with their dried-up, sun-sucked clapboard houses. Only the
citrus groves laden with fruit looked green and alive. Everything else seemed
baked and desiccated with the heat.
Looking out at the gloomy silent withered forests, Bond thought that nothing
could be living in them except bats and scorpions, horned toads and black
widow spiders.
They had lunch and then suddenly the train was running along the Gulf of
Mexico, through the mangrove swamps and palm groves, endless motels and
caravan sites, and Bond caught the smell of the other
Florida, the Florida of the advertisements, the land of 'Miss Orange Blossom
I954'.
They left the train at Clearwater, the last station before St. Petersburg.
Bond took a cab and gave the address on Treasure Island, half an hour's drive
away. It was two o'clock and the sun blazed down out of a cloudless sky.
Solitaire insisted on taking off her hat and veil. 'It's sticking to my face,'
she said.
'Hardly a soul has ever seen me down here.'
A big negro with a face pitted with ancient smallpox was held up in his cab at
the same time as they were checked at the intersection of Park Street and
Central Avenue, where the Avenue runs on to the long
Treasure Island causeway across the shallow waters of Boca Ciega Bay.
When the negro saw Solitaire's profile his mouth fell open. He pulled his cab
into the kerb and dived into a drugstore. He called a St. Petersburg number.
'Dis is Poxy,' he said urgently into the mouthpiece. 'Gimme da Robber'n step
on it. Dat you, Robber?
Lissen, Da Big Man muss be n'town. Whaddya mean yuh jes talked wit him 'n New
York? Ah jes seen his gal 'n a Clear-water cab, one of da Stassen Company's.
Headin' over da Causeway. Sho Ahm sartin.
Cross ma heart. Couldn mistake dat eyeful. Wid a man 'n a blue suit, grey
Stetson. Seemed like a scar down his face. Whaddya mean, follow 'em? Ah jes
couldn believe yuh wouldn tell me da Big Man wuz 'n town ef he wuz. Thought
mebbe Ahd better check 'n make sho. Okay, okay. Ah'll ketch da cab when he
comes back over da Causeway, else at Clearwater. Okay, okay. Keep yo shirt on.
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Ah ain't done nuthen wrong.'
The man called 'The Robber' was through to New York in five minutes. He had
been warned about
Bond but he couldn't understand where Solitaire tied in to the picture. When
he had finished talking to
The Big Man he still didn't know, but his instructions were quite definite.
He rang off and sat for a while drumming his fingers on his desk. Ten Grand
for the job. He'd need two men. That would leave eight Grand for him. He
licked his lips and called a poolroom in a downtown bar in Tampa.
Bond paid off the cab at The Everglades, a group of neat white-and-yellow
clapboard cottages set on three sides of a square of Bahama grass which ran
fifty yards down to a bone-white beach and then to the sea. From there, the
whole Gulf of Mexico stretched away, as calm as a mirror, until the heat-haze
on the horizon married it into the cloudless sky.
After London, after New York, after Jacksonville, it was a sparkling
transition.
Bond went through a door marked 'Office' with Solitaire demurely at his heels.
He rang a bell that said, 'Manageress : Mrs. Stuyvesant', and a withered
shrimp of a woman with blue-rinsed hair appeared and smiled with her pinched
lips. 'Yes?'
'Mr. Leiter?'
'Oh yes, you're Mr. Bryce. Cabana Number One, right down on the beach. Mr.
Leiter's been expecting you since lunchtime. And& ?' She heliographed with her
pince-nez towards Solitaire.
'Mrs. Bryce,' said Bond.
'Ah yes,' said Mrs. Stuyvesant, wishing to disbelieve. 'Well, if you'd care to
sign the register, I'm sure you and Mrs. Bryce would like to freshen up after
the journey. The full address, please. Thank you.'
She led them out and down the cement path to the end cottage on the left. She
knocked and Leiter appeared. Bond had looked forward to a warm welcome,-but
Leiter seemed staggered to see him. His mouth hung open. His straw-coloured
hair, still faintly black at the roots, looked like a haystack.
'You haven't met my wife, I think,' said Bond.
'No, no, I mean, yes. How do you do?'
The whole situation was beyond him. Forgetting Solitaire, he almost dragged
Bond through the door. At the last moment he remembered the girl and seized
her with his other hand and pulled her in too, banging the door shut with his
heel so that Mrs. Stuyvesant's 'I hope you have a happy& ' was guillotined
before the'stay'. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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