LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

nice laugh. Mark acknowledged it with a wave of the unlit cigar. “I want to welcome all of you to the Southern Belle. As some of you may be aware, I worked on riverboats much like this one, back in my early days. I was an apprentice pilot to Captain Horace Bixby, whose task it was to teach me the river. But the face of the water itself, in time, became a wonderful book…a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”

      I guessed that most of that must have been a passage from Life on the Mississippi that Mark Lansing had memorized. He continued talking in Twain’s words about the river, about how the slightest ripple might indicate a snag under the water that could tear the bottom right out of a riverboat. Despite its peaceful, placid appearance, the river hid many dangers under its slow-moving surface, and a good pilot had to be able to recognize all of them instinctively.

      Mark was good; I had to give him that. He spoke Twain’s words with precision and conviction. After a while, listening to him was like being back there roughly a hundred and fifty years earlier, when the country was still young and brawling and vibrant.

      Gradually the focus shifted from the river to young Sam Clemens’s boyhood in Hannibal. I didn’t know which pieces of writing the passages came from—probably more than one—but Mark wove them together into a narrative that was, well, rollicking. It was easy to see how young Sam’s experiences in Hannibal had become the stuff of fiction in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark kept the audience alternating between rapt attention and uproarious laughter. He never broke character and was never less than convincing in his portrayal.

      Most of the performance had to do with Hannibal and the Mississippi, but to wrap it up Mark performed some material about Twain’s days as a newspaper correspondent in the West, then talked about politics for a while. The jabs at Congress and the president were as timely as when Twain wrote them, and the passengers in the salon seemed to enjoy them a lot. When Mark waved his cigar in the air and said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” they gave him a standing ovation.

      After the performance people crowded around to talk to him. Some of them even wanted an autograph, which Mark provided even though he looked a little uncomfortable doing so. I thought he did, anyway. He stayed in character while chatting with the passengers. I waited until they left him alone before I slipped up beside him.

      “Oh, Mr. Twain, that was just amazin’,” I said in a breathless voice. “You’re my favorite writer in the whole wide world.”

      Mark kept smiling under the bushy mustache, but he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my whole life.”

      “You didn’t have anything to be scared about. You were great!”

      “You really think so?”

      I nodded and said, “I do.”

      “You’re not just saying that?”

      “Nope. You had all these folks eatin’ right out of the palm of your hand. I think everybody in here enjoyed it. I know I did.”

      “Well, it’s kind of you to say so.” Mark took a handkerchief from the breast pocket of the white suit coat he wore and patted his forehead with it. A little make-up came off on the handkerchief.

      I linked my arm with his and said, “Come on over to the bar. It’s not every day I can ask Mark Twain to have a drink with me.”

      The same bartender brought us champagne. Mark had some trouble drinking his through the drooping fake mustache, but he managed. “Next time I’ll get rid of this soup strainer first,” he complained.

      “No, no, you have to leave it on,” I told him. “It makes you look distinguished.”

      “You really think it went all right?”

      “I know it did.”

      Mark relaxed after that, and we chatted about his performance and the passengers’ reactions. Some of them still came up to him to shake his hand and thank him for an entertaining evening. He seemed to enjoy talking to them, and after a while I leaned over to him and said, “I think you may have a future in this business.”

      “What, riverboat acting?”

      “It’s a start. Today, the riverboat. Tomorrow, Hollywood or Broadway!”

      “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he cautioned, but I could tell he was pleased by what I’d said.

      I started thinking about what a pleasant evening it had turned out to be after all, despite the strains and worries of the afternoon. The Kramers could work out their problems between themselves. Wherever Ben Webster had gone, at least I was confident he wasn’t still on the riverboat. The rest of the overnight cruise was bound to go smoothly.

      I know, I know. I’m dumb that way sometimes.

      I was nursing another glass of champagne when the cell phone in my purse rang. Thinking that it might be Melissa or Luke, I said, “Excuse me a minute,” to Mark and stepped away from the bar while I took the phone from my purse.

      The number on the display wasn’t a familiar one, though. I didn’t even recognize the area code. I opened the phone and said, “Delilah Dickinson.”

      “Ms. Dickinson.” It was a man’s voice, calm and powerful, and one that I’d never heard before, as far as I could recall. I didn’t have to wonder whom it belonged to, though, because he went on immediately, “This is Captain Williams.”

      “Captain Williams?” I repeated.

      “Captain of the Southern Belle,” he explained. “Where are you right now?”

      The blunt question took me by surprise. “Why, I’m in the salon—” I began.

      “Stay right there if you would, please. Mr. Rafferty will come and get you.”

      “Come and…get me?” Whatever this was, if Rafferty was involved it couldn’t be good.

      “That’s right. There’s something…or rather, someone…you need to see.”

      No, sir, I thought. Not good at all.

      CHAPTER 6

      Mark must have seen the worried look on my face as I closed my cell phone and slipped it back into my purse. “Problem?” he asked. “Something about your tour?”

      “I don’t know.” I picked up my glass and threw back the rest of the champagne. Luckily there wasn’t much of it left, or I might have choked on it. “That was Captain Williams. You know him?”

      “I’ve met him a couple of times. I’m new at the job of playing Mark Twain, remember? I don’t know any of the crew all that well yet.”

      “When you talked to him, did the captain strike you as the sort of fella who’d get worked up over something if it wasn’t important?”

      “Not at all,” Mark said, not hesitating a bit. “He seemed very calm and levelheaded to me.”

      There went my idea that maybe the captain wanted to fuss at me because one of my clients littered the deck or something like that. Calm and levelheaded meant that Williams wouldn’t be sending the head of security to fetch me unless something important had happened.

      “If there’s anything I can do to help…” Mark went on.

      I didn’t want to burden him with my problems. Besides, I didn’t even know yet what the problem was. So I shook my head and said, “No, that’s all right. But I appreciate the offer from a famous man like Mark Twain.”

      Just then, Logan Rafferty came into the salon. He moved with a brisk efficiency that said while he wasn’t hurrying, he wasn’t wasting any time, either. He spotted me and started across the salon toward me.

Скачать книгу